by donald dusinberre imartsyfartsy@gmail.com
B- Rated PG13 97 min.
After losing his father as a young boy, Jeffrey Mannus (Jon Heder) developed an unhealthy attachment to his mother, causing them both to be locked into a co-dependent relationship. After many years of coddling each other, neither of them is well equipped to get out and start new relationships.
Now 29-years old, Jeffrey is still living with his mother and barely hanging on to a job at the bookstore he’s had since high school. He is completely unwilling to relinquish his hold on his mother, but she is beginning to show signs of growth. With pressure from a friend, mother Jan (Diane Keaton) awkwardly scores a date with Mert Rosenbloom (Jeff Daniels), a multi-talented motivational speaker. Their relationship progresses quickly, making life uncomfortable for Jeffrey.
Mert is a cheesy man but genuinely very nice, giving Jeffrey no real reason to hate him. Nevertheless, he tries hard to shake his mother’s affection for Mert, and for every attempt, Mert counters flawlessly. It’s not long before Mert moves into the house, where a full-on war develops, with both men struggling for dominance in the household. As a result, we are treated to a classic filmmaking technique, the “montage of pranks.”
After being banished to the basement and overhearing a bit of hanky-panky, Jeffrey decides to leave the house in search of Nora (Anna Faris), his only potential female companion. She’s a naïve yet spunky alterna-chick who is oddly drawn to him, despite his high-maintenance attitude. Together, the unlikely couple ventures into unfamiliar geographical and emotional territory.
By attempting to preserve one relationship, Jeffrey nearly destroys them all. Only after he hits bottom and burns all his bridges does he begin to realize that relationships are fluid and always changing. Hopefully, this movie will teach millions of calculator-watch-wearing citizens how silly they look, but instead, it will serve as a momentary reminder that relationships are reciprocal arrangements, and you can’t just take what you want from people.
Starring Jon Heder, Diane Keaton, Jeff Daniels and the oh-so-cute Anna Faris, Mama’s Boy was directed by Tim Hamilton, with whose scant previous work I am wholly unfamiliar. I’m pretty sure Keaton and Daniels have appeared in a few pictures over the years, while Faris was most notably in Waiting… and the Scary Movie movies. As we all should know by now, Heder played the title character in Napoleon Dynamite, and gosh, I’ve been trying to shake Napoleon from Heder’s roles ever since.
That’s actually a real issue you might face while watching Mama’s Boy, and it’s not completely detrimental. Other than the fact that Napoleon’s mother was completely absent, one can imagine Napoleon ten or twelve years later, responding to situations in much the same way. Like Napoleon, Jeffrey is self-centered, self-conscious, and ridiculously dorky. He makes me feel really hip and proud to never have developed my skills with a bowstaff and battle other chainmail-wearing dorks in the park. Anyway, because of the inadvertent background knowledge, Jeffrey is immediately familiar.
It occurred to me that the development of Jeffrey’s awkward relationship with Nora is similar to Howard Crick’s relationship with Ana Pascal in Stranger than Fiction. Realizing that made me wonder: If Stranger than Fiction was Will Ferrell’s attempt at Punch-Drunk Love, then perhaps Mama’s Boy is Jon Heder’s version of Stranger, but with a less clever plot. It gets watered down each time, but overall, it’s still endearing. The movie itself cashes in on Nora’s hipness, as the soundtrack is peppered with music she would enjoy, heavily represented by Morrissey and The Smiths.
Admittedly, Mama’s Boy is a little trite; the lessons are shallow and the plot is…let’s say certified pre-owned. It offers many lessons that we’ve all heard more than once: Change is good. Don’t get into a rut. Get crazy every once in a while. Scarves are pretentious unless it’s really cold. Don’t fall for the Bed, Bath & Bullcrapt. Which brings me to the grade I’ve given this movie. This is not a bad movie, but it does belong in the gigantic pile of “ehh” movies. I can’t give it a bad grade, because it was mildly entertaining and I detected no major flaws, but essentially, it’s another load forced upon us by the boring sods writing movies in Hollywood. Therefore, I can’t give it an exceptional grade either, because I will very likely forget about it very soon.
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