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Jeff, Who Lives at Home: Slacker Existentialism

By Jim Rohner · March 17, 2012

 

Think of the last wrong number call you received.  Seeing as mobile phones can store every nuance of a person's contact information, did you ever pause to wonder how it's conceivable that someone called you looking for somebody else?  Perhaps the caller took a peak at a swiftly scribbled number and took a guess as to whether the last number was a 9 or a 7.  Perhaps it's been a while since they last attempted to contact this person and they just don't recall the number as well as they used to.  Perhaps the area code was supposed to be 917 instead of 907.  Some of these explanations may have fleetingly entered your mind only to be quickly forgotten.  But have you ever stopped to consider that you were meant to receive that wrong number?  That everything happens for a reason and thus, there is no such thing as a wrong number?

Jeff (Jason Segel) has.  In fact, the titular character who lives at home in Jeff, Who Lives at Home does nothing but consider if such profundities can be unearthed in such mundanities.  An unemployed, 30-year old pothead who infrequently ventures from his mom's basement, Jeff, as characters in mumblecore movies are won’t to do, is experiencing a bit of an existentialist crisis.  Having seen Signs one too many times, Jeff is convinced that even the most seemingly unmotivated of events, such as the finicky drinking habits of a young girl, allude to a greater significance and it's a commitment to this belief that finds him obsessed with the name "Kevin" after he becomes the recipient of an angry call asking to speak to a man of that name who has never lived there. 

In comical and pathetic fashion, this obsession causes him to diverge from an errand to pick up some wood glue – a panel on a cabinet door in the kitchen has come loose – in order to tail a Latino youth who has printed his name, Kevin, on his basketball jersey and whose only answer to Jeff's journey is to mug him and leave him broke and injured in an abandoned building. 

And yet, while Jeff's bumbling attempt at escaping his suburban malaise may be laughable in its execution, it is, in comparison to the rest of his family, admirable in its ambition.  Jeff's brother, Pat (Ed Helms), and his wife, Linda (Judy Greer) are surviving a stagnant marriage that we're led to believe was already dangerously close to imploding even before his misguided purchase of a new Porsche.  Pat, donning the facade of businessman, doesn't buy into Jeff's "Yoda on acid" babbles about existence and a higher meaning, yet is charged with the task of physically and emotionally wrangling him in at the behest of their mother, Sharon (Susan Sarandon), an aging office worker who seems incapable of motivating her sons because she has never been able to emotionally or professionally transcend her carbon copy cubicle. 

The brothers come together unexpectedly – or imminently? – after Jeff's Kevin quest gets off to a rocky start and must attempt to put aside their bickering when they stumble upon evidence that Linda is being unfaithful.  Suddenly, Pat has a reason to try, something to fight for, but to do so he'll look anywhere for guidance, even to a somewhat estranged brother who admits that he doesn't even really know what signs to look for or how to recognize them. 

It's funny to me that Jeff, Who Lives at Home will only be theatrically accessible to those in major metropolitan areas because the film deals so heavily, even if not explicitly, with the theme of suburban malaise.  From the mundane task requiring Jeff's purchase of wood glue, to the cramped quarters of Pat and Linda's second floor apartment, to the colorless drudgery of Sharon's job, co-writers/directors Jay and Mark Duplass have made Jeff and his slacker existentialism an easy surrogate for the audience because, even without a belief in a master plan or a guiding force, we have to believe there must be something out there more meaningful than the physical and emotional ennui in which the characters are engulfed.

True, there is an undercurrent of the belief in a larger purpose for us all – what some would call faith – but the Duplass brothers are smart enough to largely let it exist in the periphery and allow viewers to make with it what they will.  While Jeff is adamant that there is a larger purpose for him, Pat never comes close to admitting to such even though he directly benefits from Jeff's philosophy.  To some, the fact that the filmmakers are almost laissez-faire in the validity of that philosophy might come off as indecisive or a half-assed product of their largely improvisational filmmaking approach, but to others, it leaves the question open for interpretation.  Instead of being too concerned with the "how" of the journey, Jeff, Who Lives at Home celebrates in the "what" of the journey, as in what changes and results because the journey was taken in the first place.

Such a low-concept film will live or die by the performances and with a genre such as mumblecore, from whence the Duplass brothers emerged and which is known for its improvised and meandering dialogue, there's an inherent potential for quickly losing interest.  Thankfully, the directors coax great performances out their cast including quite possibly the best performance ever seen from Ed Helms.  The characters often overlap, stutter and trail off awkwardly, but all those verbal tics give credence to the idea that these are ordinary people faced with relatively extraordinary problems.  Their cluelessness in the face of adversity is endearing in the sense that we'd likely all respond the same way while their willingness to dive right in is just in line enough with film archetypes that there's still a healthy dose of vicarious living. 

Small elements of Jeff, Who Lives at Home don't fit as cohesively into the narrative as others – Pat's purchase of a Porsche out of the blue seems more narratively obligatory than clearly motivated and the effectiveness of Sharon's emotional development is hampered by being rushed – but overall, the film is one of the most pleasant surprises of the year so far, taking an intimate look at the larger issues that escape us at our best times and consume us at our worst.