Cyrus

Cyrus

Cyrus tells the story of a young man with an Oedipus complex and a mother too naive to know better. That’s at least until John (John C. Reilly) meets Molly at a party and eventually comes home to meet the lad himself. Cyrus (Hill) and Molly (Tomei) supply the makes for a disheveling mix of strange familial tendencies and openly emotional exchanges. John, the desperate divorcee, enters only to find he has quite the subversive foe in his new girlfriend’s son.

The film opens to John’s ex-wife walking in on him masturbating in his apartment with headphones on. Half of his ass hangs out of his BVD’s as he lays sideways on his bed in front of a laptop. She walks in. This is basically as funny as the movie gets as after the exchange Cyrus veers in a more sincere direction trying to garner laughs from the uncomfortable silences without relying on any of the over-the-top humor that probably would have served the film better.

In fact, most of the film is shot the way a Thursday night sit-com is. Quick zooms onto facial expressions during off-putting moments would have Cyrus play out as an attempt at subversive comedy with sub-genuine meaningfulness. As a whole though, the film never supplied enough to take seriously nor did it offer enough to laugh at. More than anything Cyrus is an exercise in awkwardness (which is disappointing given its real potential).