As the final minutes of act two approached I felt Jeff, Who Lives at Home slipping away. Things had been okay up to that moment, but it felt like the film was reaching a turning point and it wasn’t working for me.
Jeff, played by Jason Segel, was speaking with his older brother Pat (Ed Helms) as the two sit in a bathtub. Pat’s life has been thrown for a bit of a loop and they are having a heart-to-heart. It’s a scene like any other you’ve seen in so many other movies, and the dialogue wasn’t moving me at all, it felt like empty words. As it turns out, this scene is the only speed bump in an otherwise great film that does a worthy job setting up a fate-based story with an ending that is one of the best I’ve seen in some time.
Like any other Duplass brother film, be it The Puffy Chair, Baghead or Cyrus, the characters are all relatively the same in that they have a slightly quirky, hipster vibe to them and live just on the other side of reality than most of us while maintaining a slight, real world connection. Here that connection largely revolves around the loss of a father and husband. Jeff, a 30-year-old still living at home with his mother (Susan Sarandon), shares a common bond with his mother in that both seem to be stuck in something of a downward spiral, and they both need a bit of a push.
For Jeff the answers are all around him, it’s just a matter of piecing together the clues. He’s a man of destiny, believing everything happens for a reason and he’s just trying to figure out that reason.
His push comes in the form of his mother sending him on a rare excursion out of the house to pick up some wood glue to fix a broken window shutter, but before he can leave the house the phone rings… “Is Kevin there?” A wrong number, but Jeff wonders, Are there any wrong numbers?
On the other side of town is Jeff’s brother Pat. Pat’s stuck in a midlife crisis, he’s just bought a Porsche, his marriage is on the rocks and his wife (Judy Greer) may be cheating on him. As the story plays out, fate conspires to bring the two brothers together despite their lifelong differences with a road to discovery on the horizon… though neither of them fully realizes it yet.
As for their mother, she has a secret admirer at work and after not having been intimate with anyone since her husband passed away, her self confidence is at an all-time low, but curiosity may get the better of her.
What’s most amazing about all of this is that this isn’t a new story, not even in the least. You’ve seen this story or some version of it so many times. It’s the reason the scene I referenced in the opening had me doubting the rest of the film’s potential. Sure, the Duplass brothers are a quality writing duo and manage to obtain a certain level of spirited dialogue, but the history of such similarly themed almost works against them until the third act brings it all together. But I don’t want you to think I am discounting the film’s quality throughout.
While Jeff, Who Lives at Home works for the majority of its duration, a combination of performance and screenwriting delivers a phenomenal conclusion to what is not only a funny film, but a heartfelt feature that uses cliche and coincidence to its advantage. I never saw the ending of this film coming and never would have imagined it could have been executed so well.
Segel, Helms and Greer are perfect casting as this is just the type of material they were born to work with. And Sarandon along with Rae Dawn Chong are also quite entertaining as a side story to the brothers’ varying levels of progress.
If there’s anything off-putting, and I had never really noticed it until it was recently pointed out to me, is what I can only assume are the Duplass’s attempt to add a level of reality to their films with strange camera zoom decisions. It comes across as an attempt at a documentary style of filmmaking where some documentarians will quickly zoom in for the reaction shot, hoping to catch a moment of pure emotional authenticity. It works on one level, and maybe my aversion to it now is only because someone pointed it out to me, or perhaps it is actually used to a greater degree in this film. But it was a distraction at times as it begins to feel as if you are being manipulated rather than responding only to the performance.
However, that’s a small quibble, and something I don’t want to focus too heavily on. Jeff, Who Lives at Home is a great film and one well worth seeking out. It didn’t deal with fate in such a way that Jeff becomes a fate-crazed moron. I never felt he was taking things so far that it became ridiculous and that is very important to the film’s ultimate conclusion where you have to be committed to Jeff’s journey and along for the ride. Despite that one wavering moment I mentioned above, I was all aboard and I’m glad I gave the film a chance.
