Table of Content
- Nerdlocker Movie Review: Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
- Check out new Common Sense Selections for games
- Jeff, Who Lives at Home: A Slacker Comedy with Heart
- Co-workers of cop who killed 3 in California took items from his home before official search
- Tia Mowry Shares Why She's Spending The Holidays With Cory Hardrict After Split
When someone mistakenly calls his number asking for Kevin, Jeff, seeing this as the sign he's been waiting for, begins his search for his role in the universe, brushing aside all ridicule in the process. “Jeff Who Lives at Home’’ devotes so much of itself to mocking the loneliness and personal shortcomings of these characters that once it stops jabbing and turns serious, you start laughing. The people here are shown in drab offices, dumpsters, and sunken down in dry motel bathtubs. The rain that showers Sharon is from a ceiling sprinkler, not the sky. The Duplasses have chosen it not because it’s one in which a lot of us live. There’s a kind of arrogance in their picking this place that’s also true of the Coens at their laziest.
How each family member found emotional attachment is beautiful to say the least. And the cast and chemistry is well shown as "Jeff Who Lives at Home" features veteran Susan Sarandon and up and coming stars Ed Helms and Jason Segel and the work of all blend well into a good picture. Instead, they engineer coincidences, acting themselves as the hands of fate, that lead Jeff, his brother and his mother to an unlikely point of intersection. As improbable as the situation becomes, the directors are merely providing a slightly self-consciously cinematic environment in which transformative events can happen. As a result, the film's warm, inspirational finish feels like a surprise, but not at all like a cheat. This gentle slacker is waiting — much to the consternation of his mother and older brother — for the universe to show him his path to greatness.
Nerdlocker Movie Review: Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
Sharon sends Jeff out on a mission to get some wood glue to fix a shutter. Jeff is 30, unmarried, unemployed and lives in his mother's basement, wreathed in pot fumes. So large and unkempt that his brother calls him Sasquatch, he watches the M. Night Shyamalan movie "Signs" over and over again, convinced it contains the key to the universe.
Jeff, Who Lives at Home is short enough not to wear out its welcome but the payoff is so slim that the investment of any serious time or effort is unlikely to be repaid in full. All of this takes place in one day, a slapstick-filled Bloomsday for characters more Bloom County than James Joyce , within a setting as blandly American as what most of us see out our front door. The movie is shot without fuss, nothing arty, just drab reality. The Duplass brothers, who co-wrote and co-directed, cut between Pat and Jeff’s adventure and Sharon’s day at her office job, where things, including a revelation about a secret admirer, actually happen to her. (A 60-something woman with a storyline? Hallelujah.) Sarandon gives a terrific performance as the kind of woman she has rarely played, a little insecure and a lot lonely. It’s a winning cast all the way around, Greer, Rae Dawn Chong (playing one of Sharon’s co-workers) and Helms , who is hilariously odious and then surprisingly vulnerable.
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Still, the performances are what make the film and they're good enough to where the film just comes off very pleasant and entertaining. Jeff, Who Lives at Home starts out by referencing a film from 10 years ago. The main character, Jeff, speaks about his love for the movie Signs. That movie was all about signs being sent to us and that we must use those signs as guides for living our lives. These signs haven't been getting him anywhere as of yet though. He's a grown-up slacker who still lives at home with his mother as the title of the film says.
What happens next can best be described as a Melodramatic Event that isn't terribly likely but is terrifically effective in lowering a one-size-fits-all deus ex machina into the plot. It's all cute and self-aware, a pleasant joke on the audience, a happy ending for characters we like. It's not a Feel Good Movie, more of a Feel Sorta Good Movie. James Mottram is a freelance film journalist, author of books that dive deep into films like Die Hard and Tenet, and a regular guest on the Total Film podcast. You'll find his writings on GamesRadar+ and Total Film, and in newspapers and magazines from across the world like The Times, The Independent, The i, Metro, The National, Marie Claire, and MindFood.
Jeff, Who Lives at Home: A Slacker Comedy with Heart
Thus begins an uncharateristically adventure-filled day in which Jeff coincidentally (?) runs into his brother and they coincidentally (?) notice Linda driving with another man. Common Sense Media's unbiased ratings are created by expert reviewers and aren't influenced by the product's creators or by any of our funders, affiliates, or partners. Honest, touching, lovely, uplifting portrait of a man who is no good at anything UNTIL THAT DAY... Though "Jeff, Who Lives At Home" may be a little boring at first, it is worth watching as the last twenty minutes are excellent. This film is about a mother and her two adult sons, who experience varying degrees of interpersonal problems.
But whereas Signs had Shymalan's signature suspense and mystery to back itself up, Jeff just seems to merely meander. Maybe there's just something more to it, but the idiosyncratic style and uneven shifts between comedic and dramatic tones muddle down whatever the movie wants to say. When Jeff gets an arbitrary sign through a phone call, it puts his world into an unexplainable focus to reaching his destiny while fighting-off the negative reactions from his brother and mother. The end result is a new view of Jeff as someone who is fearless, and open to seeing the world as it really is and not just as a spectator passing through it.
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I tend to like the Duplass Brothers, who wrote and directed, so I guess this wasn't a hard sell. On the downside, the movie's laid-back approach isn't quite strong enough to effectively blend its comedy and drama elements. Rather, they seem to take turns over the course of various scenes, with the comedy slipping away almost entirely during the climax.
The loose, semi-improvisational feel and handheld cameras that define mumblecore are still here, along with the brothers' favorite camera trick, the quick zoom in to highlight an emotional moment. A story of two lost souls who happen to be brothers and who unexpectedly find a connection with each other, Jeff is heartfelt, funny and continually surprising. With each new movie, filmmakers Mark and Jay Duplass show greater assurance as writers and directors. Though their films now feature recognizable (even well-known) actors and their production values are a little glossier, they haven't lost their determinedly personal take on the stories and characters on which they focus.
In terms of laughs, yeah- JEFF WHO LIVES AT HOME is funny, but in a genteel sort of way. You'll never double over in laughter, but the whole thing feels pleasant, and at eighty minutes, goes down pretty smooth. Now, I said that for ninety-percent of the running time, this felt minor. The last twenty minutes or so throw the audience a bit of a curve-ball, with Jeff's idea of destiny having a surprisingly dramatic payoff, that pushed the film into territory I wasn't expecting. However, this switch isn't jarring, and works to the film's advantage, give it a uniqueness I wasn't anticipating. Dispatched from his basement room on an errand for his widowed mother, slacker Jeff might discover his destiny when he spends the day with his unhappily married brother as he tracks his possibly adulterous wife.
During a press conference, the duo talked about their unique way of making this film. They said that they fully lit each scene before the actors stepped onto the set. After that, the actors were free to improvise and play-out the scenes with each other. Jeff is an unemployed, 30 year old, childlike pot-head who lives in his mother's basement and watches the M Night Shyamalan movie Signs so often that he is convinced there are no "wrong numbers" in life ... After the latest "sign" , Jeff heads out to complete a simple task for his disenchanted mother.
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