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JEFF WHO LIVES AT HOME

 

Hollywood has been releasing an increased number of films dealing with over grown children, still living at home with their parents.

 

There was "Step Brothers" with Will Ferrell and John C Riley and competing middle aged losers. Then there was "Cyrus" with Jonah Hill living at home in an odd relationship with his mother played by Maria Tomei. "Failure to Launch" with Matthew McConaughey as the overgrown child who refuses to leave home. And now "Jeff Who Lives at Home" with Jason Segal playing the part of the slacker who won't leave.

 

Worse yet, Jeff is a slacker who won't leave and stays stoned in the basement of his mother's home. Susan Sarandon plays his stressed out mother who really wants him out of the house but can't figure out how.

The first thing she needs him to do his run a simple errand for some wood glue to make a simple repair in the house. Can he at least do that?

 

Again, Jeff is a stoner who somehow has enough money to buy drugs but has little motivation to do anything else. But faced with the possibility of eviction he finally sucks it up to go purchase some wood glue.

 

During a skewed type of "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" Jeff turn a simple errand into a type of existential journey where he reads messages into just about everything he encounters on his way to buy glue.

 

The main thing he encounters is his older brother Pat (Ed Helms) who is married and relatively successful. But he too has a difficulty with reality - but in a different sense.

Their accidental encounter leads them on a quest to find out if Pat's wife Linda (Judy Greer) is having an affair. She is currently pissed that Pat has bought a Porshe without even consulting her.

 

So the two embark on an accidental odyssey that involves car wrecks, ice cream trucks, vending machines and shady motels.

 

meanwhile mom is stressing out at work with the help of her co-worker (Rae Dawn Chong) trying to help her get through the day. That day would include romantic messages from a mysterious stranger. A stranger who wants to meet and possibly...

 

But first she has to wonder if her stupid son can perform the simplest of duties - buy some glue. As much as fraternal directors Mark and Jay Duplass try make this story of nothing more interesting... it meets with mediocrity.

 

While the Duplass' managed a weird kind of success in the telling of "Cyrus" - built mainly around a son cock-blocking his mother's relationship with her boyfriend - this has even less purpose and no payoff.

 

"Jeff Who Lives at Home" has it's moments of humor, but those fleeting moments are torpedoed by a story that goes too-much absolutely nowhere.   -- GEOFF BURTON

 

GEOFF BURTON

 

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