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Created Jul 07, 2010 11:29PM PST • Edited Jun 09, 2014 07:41PM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Great 4.0

   Fingering two of society’s soft spots, Cyrus lampoons middle-aged singles looking for love and grown kids who’ve been emotionally indulged their entire overly-protected lives. Plus it generates plenty of LOL moments in the offing. Score.

   John C. Reilly and Jonah Hill deliver great performances as rivals for Marissa Tomei’s emotional succor. The wrinkle is that Hill plays her son, with whom she has a codependent relationship.

   Writer-directors Jay & Mark Duplass have crafted a contemporary classic with Cyrus, even more so because it is an exemplar of mumblecore filmmaking, more about which in the Film commentary below.

   They also make great use of their stars, highlighting them in a series of extreme closeups. Hill proves himself a moviestar since even his penguin head – blown-up full silver-screen sized – holds our interest.

   The Duplass brothers are comedic masters for good measure, making Reilly commit one bonehead move after another, each an obviously bad idea. Funny right away, this repetition comedy gets funnier as it goes.

   The only fly-in-the-ointment is that Marissa Tomei’s ultimo MILF is über cute, too much so to have birthed Jonah the Whale or be available to John C. Reilly’s sad sack of a man. It’s the Hollywood code extended to maternal relationships: guys not only score way above their heat level, here an endomorph gets born to a hottie mom. I don’t think so. This doesn’t ruin the movie however because all three leads are terrific, even if it’s effectively Snow White and the Two Dorks.
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   Industry Note: What are big budget action guys Ridley and Tony Scott doing executive producing an indy comedy like this? Here’s how big the Scott Free brothers are: IMDb says they’ve currently got 10 movies in production and another 21 in development. As directors, Ridley’s still got Robin Hood in theaters, this some two years after Body of Lies, which followed American Gangster the year before that. Tony’s pumping ’em out somewhat slower than his older brother, but no one can take Top Gun away from him, even if it was a quarter of a century ago.

   So why are the brothers who personify a need for speed behind this mumblecore FX-free movie? The answer must be that they know a winner when they see it, and probably find it satisfying to back another pair of brother filmmakers. Jay & Mark Duplass, meet Ridley and Tony Scott, your fairy god brothers.

4. Acting

   Very Good 3.5

   John C. Reilly – with a face that looks fashioned from PlayDoh – excels playing sad sacks. His final line in The Perfect Storm was so perfectly sad it made the entire movie. So he’s ideal to play the loser at the center of a modern comedy, a good thing since he carries the movie, effectively if not effortlessly.

   Jonah Hill’s title character doesn’t appear till the second reel. Marissa Tomei doesn’t even appear till several scenes into the story.

   Hill effectively broadens his range by mugging only a fraction of the time he’s on-screen, though he is a world-class mugger, capable of silently articulating an F-bomb over his mother’s shoulder to hilarious effect. Given his obesity, he’s the moviestar for the Super-Sized generation. A guy coming out of the theater behind me remarked that Hill looks like a penguin. Spot on, dude.

   Marissa was adorable – natch – but not essential. IOW, the movie is inconceivable with actors other than Reilly and Hill playing their parts. Not so Tomei. Still, she’s become a sure fire supporting player, as she proved in The Wrestler and Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead.

   Catherine Keener was also strong playing a classic Catherine Keener role: the cheerful yet angst-prone modern woman.

5. Male Stars Really Great 4.5

6. Female Stars Very Good 3.5

7. Female Costars Very Good 3.5

8. Male Costars Good 3.0

10. Film

    Great 4.0

    Mumblecore comes of age with Cyrus, ironically enough given that the film is about a young man who refuses to come of age. Resisting adulthood seems a mumblecore theme, as defined in an ’07 Village Voice profile on this new style of filmmaking. Cyrus – the character – personifies the “awkwardly diffident young person” … “fueled by a combination of narcissism and diffidence” said to populate mumblecore films. Diffidence? Ah, yeah, I guess so. Whatever.

    The Duplass brothers employ an interesting technique in their film. A couple has an intense conversation, though we don’t see their mouths move. Instead we hear their conversation in voice-over, while seeing them smiling, nodding and otherwise engaging in the silences within the conversation. A mumblecore technique? If so, it’s a worthy contribution to modern filmmaking.

11. Direction Great 4.0

12. Play Great 4.0

13. Music Great 4.0

    Music is essential to the success of the film, from the ultimately charming karaoke when Marissa and Reilly meet cute to Jonah Hill’s not entirely lame synthesizer compositions.

14. Visuals Very Good 3.5
15. Content

16. Edge

    Risqué 1.8

    A little naughty and often not so nice.

17. Sex Titillating 1.8

18. Violence Gentle 1.1

19. Rudeness Salty 2.5

21. Reality

    Glib 1.1

    Mother and son share his emotions, which means the mother hasn’t had the courage to let her son own his own emotions, a not uncommon flaw with many moms these days. Thus a large cohort of emotionally unresilient kids are in for rude awakenings when mommy’s no longer there to stroke and coddle them.

22. Circumstantial Glib 1.3

23. Biological Natural 1.0

24. Physical Natural 1.0