Cyrus: Clever Title Unnecessary. F***ing Great Film.

Going into the Duplass Brothers’ Cyrus, I have to admit… I was skeptical at best, mostly because of the two headliners: John C. Reilly and Jonah Hill. Don’t get me wrong, I like both of these guys well enough, Reilly in particular (newbies to Reilly probably think he’s exclusively Will Ferrell’s comedic doppelganger, but he’s been in everything, from the hilarious to uber-serious fare. Check out Magnolia, Boogie Nights, and Sydney (aka Hard Eight) – P.T. Anderson’s first 3 films.) As for Mr. Hill… well, ya know. I mean, he’s alright. I certainly don’t have a vendetta against him or anything. He’s just kind of a one trick pony. John Druska and I actually recently dissected Jonah Hill’s fledgling career on our Podcast “Feast of the Assumption.” Basically, we came to the conclusion that Hill is the new go-to “corpulent” guy (being a husky lad myself, I’m wary of dropping the 3-letter F-bomb.) From Superbad to Forgetting Sarah Marshall to Get Him To The Greek, he’s the socially awkward guy who’s latently homoerotic most of the time, but also makes you laugh (and not just because he’s husky – he’s actually funny.) All that said, I find that his performances seem like carbon copies of one another – the same, only slightly different based on whether or not the paper moved ever-so-slightly on the Xerox glass.

So when I saw the trailer for Cyrus, I was like, “Eh. It looks like a trying-to-be-serious Stepbrothers, except Reilly is the guy dating the mom, and Jonah Hill is Will Ferrell’s character circa his 20s.” The thing that tipped the curious scale though was how hard the trailer seemed to push the at least somewhatserious tone of the film. But the quick little whisper-laden exchanges between Reilly and Hill like, “I will take you down,” and the fast little blip of them wrestling at what looks like a wedding… well, both of these things made me go, “Blaaaaaaah.”

Consider this sentence the most important sentence of this review: Cyrus was a lovely, heartfelt, hilarious, feel-good, realistic portrait of the Life Crisis.

Yes, my assumptions were wrong. Cyrus made me feel like a gooey piece of cinnamon toast – wholesome, fulfilled, sweet, and tummy warming.

Before I get into the nitty gritty of the movie, let me just give very apt praise to Marisa Tomei. This woman, for the love of God, is amazing. I simply HAVE NOT SEEN a performance of hers that she didn’t nail. Between this film, In the Bedroom, The Wrestler, My Cousin Vinny, and even Slums of Beverly Hills I can’t express enough that this woman is a master of her craft. I simply don’t know how she’s not praised as much as the Streeps and the Winslets. I only mention this with such adamance here because I’m going to be exclusively talking about Reilly and Hill for the most part, but needed to mention Tomei. I love you, Marisa – more than George Costanza ever could have.

Cyrus is a completely spot-on depiction of the Life Crisis (not just the mid-life, but more on that later.) John (played by Reilly) is a down-and-out man-child, who still clings to his ex-wife of 7 years (Catherine Keener), despite the fact that she’s about to be remarried. John is accepting of the info, as he’s friends with the new guy that’s essentially taking his place… but he’s still depressed. And what makes his depression so believable is the fact that he can barely articulate why he’s depressed. The inexplicable reluctance to be social; the neglected apartment; the incredible importance of the masturbation ritual. Maybe I’m going out on a limb here… but it’s all eerily realistic…

Which takes us to one of the seminal scenes in the film. Forced by his Ex to go to a party to cruise for tail, John fervently downs Red Bull and Vodkas, thinking this will make him suave, confident, and collected. This of course, isn’t the case. Shot down time and again, John finally mans up and just lays it on the line – he tells the least attractive girl in the room how cool he thinks he is, that he knows he can enrich someone’s life, that he just doesn’t get why he’s stayed alone so long, and that he just wants someone to accept his unshakable quirks for what they are – character traits that make him unique, not necessarily flawed. This scene is staggeringly funny, tragic, and awkward – it’s manifest mid-life crisis in full swing.

This is just one of many scenes where I found myself thinking, “I am John C. Reilly in this movie. Fuck.” Yes, I’m 26; yes, I act 45. I’m in the midst of my quarter-life crisis – a man-child closer to the child end of the spectrum. I get depressed for now reason. I haven’t been with a woman or really even talked to one that was remotely interested in me for about… I don’t know, I guess 3 years now. There’s been dates here and there, but they’re all filler, or I say something way too personal way too early. And now’s the part where I forget if I’m talking about myself or John C. Reilly’s character in Cyrus. Obviously, I digress…

Being that I don’t think I’ve ever been better represented by a character in a film (with the exception of the aptly named Preston Meyers in Can’t Hardly Wait, performed to the T by Ethan Embry), I’m definitely positioned on high on Bias Mountain in regards to Cyrus. Which is equal parts depressing, and incredibly hopeful.

John does find love when he meets Molly (Tomei). She gets him in the crosshairs as he pees in a bush outside the party, right after he drunkenly slurred his non-relationship confession to Unattractive Partygoer #1. No use going into more detail – Molly is easily the most understanding and laid back woman that John has likely ever met. They almost instantaneously fall in love.

To jump way ahead, John soon learns that Molly has a 21-year-old son – Cyrus (Hill). What is so genius about this movie is that Cyrus and John are the exact same person, each of them respectively going through their mid- and quarter-life crises. They just can’t see it because they both want Molly to themselves. I should say that Cyrus’s crisis is definitely more than just a quarter-life crisis – he’s definitely been in a state of crisis his entire life, never able to find who he is without his mother. The only outlets he has for creativity or confidence are his techno music compositions, which are actually surprisingly amazing. Easily the funniest scene in the film (for me) is when Cyrus performs for John – diddling around on keyboards, and strange Radiohead-esque synth circuitry. Sigh. So good.

I know this sounds super simple, but both Reilly and Hill’s performances are so carefully constructed and nuanced that it takes the film to a complex level rarely captured effectively. They’re both their own foils, and total reflections of one another. Cyrus can’t remove himself from his mother; John can’t remove himself from his ex-wife. Cyrus won’t leave his mom alone when she’s trying to be intimate with John; John can’t stay away from his Ex, frustrating the hell out of her fiancee. The amazing thing is that the neither Reilly nor Hill ever acknowledge how similar their characters are to one another. Cheers to the Duplass brothers for putting subtlety back in comedy (and films in general.) They treat the subject matter so delicately, you almost wonder if they meant to make the film as nuanced and personal as it is. I kept thinking there would be the inevitable line that pointed to the whole Cyrus/John similarity – the one where one of them says, “We’re the same.” This never happens. Things just unfold; people react; and most importantly, people are aloof and unaware of themselves.

I could go on and on, and I apologize for the scattered nature of this review. Cyrus just worked for me, so much so that I have trouble articulating. Sigh again.

Again, Duplass brothers, kudos to you guys. The last movie I saw that had this much restrained quirk and honesty was Miranda July’s Me and You and Everyone We Know– if you haven’t seen this, drop everything right now and Netflix it. Seriously. There’s really not much else I can say about Cyrus that doesn’t just give the entire movie away. Just know that it’s one of the most satisfying endings to a movie I’ve seen in a long time – it’s a 70s cinema ending. That’s all I’ll say.