53rd San Francisco International Film Festival 22 April - 6 May 2010
FILMS/
CYRUS
World Cinema
USA, 2010, 92 minutes
SHOWTIMES
Sun, May 02 / 9:15 / Kabuki / CYRU02K
Tue, May 04 / 9:45 / Kabuki / CYRU04K
CREDITS
- dir
-
Jay Duplass, Mark Duplass
- prod
-
Michael Costigan
- scr
-
Jay Duplass, Mark Duplass
- cam
-
Jas Shelton
- editor
-
Jay Deuby
- cast
-
John C. Reilly, Jonah Hill, Marisa Tomei, Catherine Keener
- source
-
Fox Searchlight Pictures, 10201 W Pico Boulevard, Building 78, Room 8, Los Angeles, CA 90035. FAX: 310-369-7402. EMAIL: russell.nelson@fox.com.
A divorced schlub thinks his luck finally has changed when he hits it off with a beautiful woman, until he meets her very adult, very attached son in this Sundance hit from cult favorites the Duplass brothers. Divorced, lumpy and lonely, the sweater-wearing John (John C. Reilly) can’t believe that he’s met (and seduced, thanks to a memorable Human League dance-off) the beautiful Molly (Marisa Tomei). All seems to be going well, even though a few warning signs pop up, like that odd photo of Molly breast-feeding her son Cyrus (Jonah Hill) a bit, um, later in life than usual. When John and Cyrus finally meet, however, what seems odd quickly gets even odder. Soon the two males are squaring off, neither wanting to share the only woman left in their lives. As the two men/boys, Reilly and Hill reach a level of improvisational lunacy rarely attained in mainstream comedy, with Hill (featured in such Judd Apatow hits as Knocked Up and Superbad) delivering one of the most unpredictably oddball characters in recent years. Their performances gain even more power under the Duplass’s raw, home movie–like shooting aesthetic, which makes even the strangest situations seem like they’re happening not on a movie set but in a neighbor’s house. Retaining the down-market, you-are-there format of their earlier cult comedies The Puffy Chair and Baghead but benefitting from a professional cast of talented comics, the Duplasses, masters of the uncomfortable moment, have created a hilariously, awkwardly honest and surprisingly adult dissection of modern romance.
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