Jeff, Who Lives at Home

2011 comedy

Rating: 14/20

Plot: Jeff, who lives at home, is going nowhere fast. Unless you count his mother's basement as a place. He's mother sends him on an errand to get supplies to fix a cabinet, and he runs into a guy named Kevin. That's not generally all that interesting, but he had answered a wrong-number phone call from somebody looking for a Kevin earlier that day and decided that there was some significance. Later, he runs into his brother, and although they don't really get along very well as adults, they work together to find out if his wife is cheating on him.

The Duplass brothers again, makers of The Puffy Chair, a movie I liked about as much as this one. Like that one, it's got realistic characters who it's not difficult to like. I suppose the Jason Segal and Ed Helms characters are based on the Duplasses. Some of the humor works just fine. I liked discussions about the anagram of K-E-V-I-N and the pussification of Gandhi. I'm not sure what the hell is going on with the music, and at times, this movie feels a little unfinished. The script, the filming itself. Something just didn't seem complete about it. But I give it credit for feeling, although there's some vague oddness there, like an actual unpredictable day in the lives of actual people. It comes together in a way at the end that you'll only really see in Hollywood. Still, despite the film's flaws, I think this one is worth checking out. And like I said with The Puffy Chair, I'm really interested in seeing how the Duplass brothers' careers grow.