Freud would have had a ball with Molly (Marisa Tomei) and Cyrus (Jonah Hill). Molly is what the Viennese Sexologist would have called an engulfing mother, a single mom with an extra strong connection to her son. Cyrus is, well, he’s Cyrus—an overweight twenty-one-year-old with an Oedipus complex and an attitude. Enter John, played by John C. Reilly, a single sad sack who falls for Molly and feels the wrath of Cyrus. As Freud said, “How bold one gets when one is sure of being loved.”
When we first meet John he’s been single for seven years and still pines for his ex wife (Catherine Keener) even though she is about to be remarried. At her insistence he goes to a party and following some of the most awkward attempts at picking up women ever put on screen he meets Molly, a pretty partygoer who is attracted to his awkwardness and honesty she begins a relationship with him. After a one night stand and the words nobody wants to hear—“My life is really complicated right now”—John follows her home and meets Cyrus, her man-child son. Cyrus pretends to be happy that John is around. “You deserve someone to love you in the way that I can’t love you,” he tells his mother, but secretly he is plotting to drive a wedge between the two.
“Cyrus” is a dark character study disguised as a comedy. Directed by Jay and Mark Duplass, a Coen-lite brother team best known for making no budget indies like “The Puffy Chair” that make the Dogme 95 films look like slick Michael Bay movies, it has a few chuckles sprinkled throughout, but don’t expect a John C. Reilly laughfest like “Stepbrothers.” “Cyrus” is about broken people, unhealthy relationships and how people act when they feel threatened. Like real life sometimes it’s funny, sometimes it’s sad, other times it’s awkward, but the brothers and actors ensure that whatever the tone of any given scene, and no matter how outrageous the situation, that it rings true.
Tomei is the glue that holds the film together. As Molly, mother of Cyrus, girlfriend to John, she’s caught between two men she loves and must provide balance as their emotional war escalates. She’s warm and believable, but also vulnerable and unpredictable. It’s another great performance from an actor who should be a bigger star than she is.
Reilly finds a balance between the character work he does for Paul Thomas Anderson in movies like “Magnolia” and the slapstick he’s been doing lately with Will Ferrell in “Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby.” It’s his most layered performance in some time and it is refreshing to see an average-guy leading man on the big screen.
Like Reilly, Jonah Hill adds dimension to Cyrus, taking a character who could have been played for laughs and adding some intensity and depth. Freud might have been speaking about him when he said, “One is very crazy when in love.”
“Cyrus” is an odd film. Not quite a comedy, not quite a drama it falls somewhere in between. Just like real life.
When Jonah Hill’s reboot of 21 Jump Street hits theatres this weekend, it joins a long list of big screen adaptations of small screen hits.
Everything from sci-fi shows like The X-Files to comedies like The Addams Family and even reality and games shows (Jackass and The Gong Show) have made the leap from TV to theatres.
Hill describes the new 21 Jump Street as an “R-rated, insane, Bad-Boys-meets-John Hughes-type movie.”
I don’t remember the TV show the movie is based on as being that edgy but if William Shatner’s cop show T.J. Hooker can be turned into an adult-friendly flick called T.J. Hookers, I suppose anything is possible.
Probably the most spun-off TV franchise is Star Trek. Between the original show and the TV offshoots, 11 films have gone where no film series has gone before.
The 2009 J.J. Abrams reboot with Chris Pine as James T. Kirk was a special effects extravaganza but the Wrath of Khan seems to tickle Trekkies the most. Based on the 1967 episode Space Seed, it’s believed to be the first time a movie was made as a sequel to a specific episode.
Ricardo Montalbán took a break from Fantasy Island to take the role, but had one request: he was a gym devotee and wanted costumes that would show off his muscular chest.
The original pilot for the hip spy show The Man From U.N.C.L.E. was actually shot with a theatrical release in mind. Although the show would air in black-and-white on NBC, the pilot was shot in colour with some racier scenes added in. The tame version aired on television, while the sexier edit played in theatres as To Trap a Spy.
Finally, sketch comedy shows have also been a fertile breeding ground for movies. Saturday Night Live has spawned a dozen films, giving us characters like Wayne and Garth and the Coneheads.
Years before SNL was even on television legendary comedy troupe Monty Python used cinema as a way to court a new worldwide audience for their TV show. And Now for Something Completely Different contains re-filmed skits from the first two seasons of their show, including the classic Nudge, Nudge, and Dead Parrot sketches.
The movie is best summed up in the words of Sergeant-Major (played by Graham Chapman). “Now, I would just like to point out that this film is displaying a distinct tendency to become silly.”
Wikipedia says “babysitting is commonly performed as an odd job by teenagers for extra money.” While that is undoubtedly the stereotype, the movies have shown us that babysitters come in all shapes and sizes.
This weekend Jonah Hill plays an irresponsible college student who reluctantly looks after his neighbour’s wild kids. How wild is it? Well, let’s put it this way; I don’t think Nanny McPhee had a “red band” trailer.
If it sounds familiar, it should. Twenty-four years ago babysitter Elisabeth Shue led her young charges through the streets of Chicago in Adventures in Babysitting. At one point they end up on a nightclub stage. The leader of the house band, played by blues legend Albert Collins, says, “Nobody leaves this place without singing the blues.”
After an awkward pause she improvises the Babysitting Blues.
“It’s so hard babysitting these guys,” she sings. “And they should be in bed,” replies the guitar player over a classic blues-rock riff.
It’s a fantasy, but then again, babysitters have often been the subjects of fantasy. Mary Poppins is a mythical character, a “practically perfect in every way” nanny who knows how to do the right thing in every situation. Kind of like a Victoria Age Super Nanny. In The Babysitter, however, Alicia Silverstone was a much different kind of fantasy child-minder.
This 1995 thriller about a babysitter who becomes the object of obsession for not only the young boys she looks after but for their father as well, is more chilling than titillating. The ads hinted at some nudity from star Silverstone, but in reality she refused to do the film unless the nude scenes where removed.
The most lovable movie minder has to be John Candy as Uncle Buck. Even though he pretends to be capable of mutilation with power tools, he’s less violent than Rebecca De Mornay in The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, manlier than Robin Williams in Mrs. Doubtfire and more alive than all the babysitters in Halloween.
In the movie’s most famous scene he answers a barrage of questions from his nephew, played by Macaulay Culkin.
On the day of filming the younger actor couldn’t remember all the questions, so Candy wrote them out and hid them where Culkin could read them.
