Well, at the end of my last review, I put Four Lions before Cyrus, but it turned out that the tickets we had booked put Cyrus before Four Lions. Not that it really matters anyway.
Cyrus is a film about John (John C. Reilly), and Molly (Marissa Tomei), and her son Cyrus (Jonah Hill). John has been divorced for seven years, and the film begins with his ex-wife Jamie (Catherine Keener) coming over to visit, only to catch him masturbating. She has came because she is worried about his increasingly depressed state, even more so after she announced her engagement to Tim (Matt Walsh). Jamie invites John to a party, where he embarrasses himself in a way that you only do in comedies, before meeting Molly at the party.
Molly and John hit it off instantly and, after Molly leaves in the middle of the night when she comes over for the second time, he stalks her to her house and falls asleep parked outside her house. He wakes up the next morning, goes to her house, and finds Cyrus, who seems friendly at first, but turns out to be worse for their relationship than they could imagine due to him and his mothers' relationship.
The reason that this plot summary is sitting here is because I want the very few of you who read this blog to understand the sort of movie I am talking about here. It is a romantic comedy, albeit an "indie" rom-com, but a rom-com nonetheless. It is formulaic, and follows the conventions throughout the movie. I find rom-com's excruciating to watch, and leave the room very abruptly if there is one on.
Cyrus was not excruciating to watch. The hand-held camera shook like hell, objects were zoomed in on with home-video techniques, the dramatic moments were telegraphed like there was no tomorrow, and the whole thing, frankly, stank of that sickening sweetness that only a modern Romantic Comedy has. But I watched it, without thinking of nails on a chalkboard as I do when stepping in to see a romantic comedy playing on the TV.
The reason behind this is the way the Duplass brothers make their films, similar to the way that Apatow makes his. They give a huge amount of freedom to improvise, knowing that with talented comedians they are more likely to be funny when they improvise than when they stick to the script. Jonah Hill and John C. Reilly, both talented comedians, use this to breathe life into a movie that otherwise would have had none. Their interactions, which still follow the conventions of romantic comedies, with Cyrus being the obstacle that comes between the happy couple, are hilarious. They play off each other naturally and their ability shines even in scenes without each other. It doesn't take a talented comedian to make a drunk character hilarious, but it sure as hell helps.
The movie can't escape the plot with improvisation, and that is ultimately the downfall of what could have been a far better comedy. The improvised scenes, particularly the beginning where the rom-com plot hasn't started yet, are very funny, to the point that I was chuckling through most of the first third or so. The plot was thin, but it was just present enough to be cloying, particularly towards the end, where the bulk of the plot seemed to be for some reason.
The technical elements really didn't help, with the music being designed to reinforce the rom-com stereotype, and the camera-work a stark reminder of the way that cinematography seems to have taken a back seat over the last decade or so, with film-makers who started in the last decade often not bothering with the conventions of their antecedents, to the point that tripods are supposedly unecessary. The editing was good though, moving along at a good clip, though the plot would have moved at a fast clip anyway.
Overall, I would give this a 3/5, based on the hilarious performances of Jonah Hill and John C. Reilly, who stood out in the dramatic moments as well. The rest of the movie should have just functioned as a frame-work for their performances, but in the end it interfered far too much with my enjoyment of their performances, and made the movie a lot worse, in my mind at least.
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