Sometimes movies try so hard to be realistic they forget that they’re still movies.
The heartwarming comedy “Jeff, Who Lives at Home” has a mystic fascination with the idea that some signs that point to our destiny are almost too powerful to not be scripted.
Jeff (Jason Segel), the 30-year-old, couch-ridden stoner living with his mom (Susan Sarandon), believes in such a fate, and he thinks it’s more than coincidence he bumped into his brother Pat (Ed Helms) to help him investigate if his wife Linda (Judy Greer) is having an affair.
The film has a subtly self-aware plot structure. These characters belong in a small-scale indie movie, but they keep getting put into madcap situations worthy of something greater.
Pat’s new Porsche gets smashed when he drunkenly shows off in it and is towed when he stubbornly parks illegally. Jeff follows clues of someone named Kevin that he thinks will lead him to an M. Night Shyamalan destiny. The boys’ mother Sharon, whose storyline is almost completely separate from her children, befits a romantic comedy complete with secret admirers and a sassy black friend telling her to get her pipes cleaned.
The trick is, Directors Mark and Jay Duplass are known for their small-scale indie movies. They popularized the “mumblecore” genre of films that are particularly low-rent. “Jeff, Who Lives at Home” willfully tests that formula in a wonderfully contained movie universe that is both simple and elegant.
Rather than have characters constantly winking at the camera, the handheld camera does the winking. The thing has a life of its own to the point that it’s impossible to forget someone is holding it. This is true of all their films, but here it’s especially nonsensical and practically obnoxious, even if it serves a purpose.
But this is a well made film with likeable characters, economical editing and a surprising level of depth and character growth. We’re almost programmed to believe that Pat’s wife Linda will be a shrill, one-dimensional bitch begging for a divorce, but Greer tears down as many emotional barriers here as she did in her pivotal scene in “The Descendants.”
“Jeff, Who Lives at Home” is a beautiful, endearing and funny film worth leaving the couch for.
3 ½ stars