Jeff, Who Lives at Home

Jeff, Who Lives at Home, a 2011 film by Jay and Mark Duplass, surprised me. I thought it would be about an unemployed guy who gets stoned all the time and lives in his mother's basement. Instead, it's about that guy as part of a mismatched buddy movie, the other half being his obnoxious brother. So we don't really find out what makes Jeff tick, or his brother, either--we just see their wacky adventures.

Though this was a let-down, it isn't a horrible movie. Jeff (Jason Segel), is a slacker who has had issues since his father died. I don't know exactly what those issues are, and I don't know why he can't hold a job. Pat (Ed Helms) is younger, has a job with a paint company (judging by the logo on his shirt) but it is an unrepentant asshole. The first we see him is telling his long-suffering wife (Judy Greer) that he has bought a Porsche, even though they don't own a house.

Segel, after getting a wrong number asking for someone named Kevin, thinks this is a cosmic sign (he worships at the shrine of the movie Signs, which will tell you how disturbed he is). This leads him to finding his brother, and they both see Greer having lunch with another man. Meanwhile, Susan Sarandon, as the men's mother, is working in an office and being flirted with over the computer by a secret admirer.

The movie rests on what ordinarily would be called coincidences, but the philosophy of Jeff (and the film) is that there are no coincidences. However, I'm still going to call bullshit on some of these groaners, such as Jeff walking in front of the Hooters where Pat is having lunch, at the same time that Sarandon is on the phone with Pat, asking him to take an interest in Jeff.

The film does have its selling points, though. Segel plays an appealing rootless man, who has his heart in the right place, though I can see how anyone in his family would be enraged by him. Helms doesn't fare as well, as his character is written so horribly that there is no way to sympathize with him, even after he reaches an epiphany. We can't see why Greer would have been attracted to him in the first place.

The ending did bring a tear to my eye, I'm ashamed to admit. For anyone who has a sibling they don't connect with, it should be very cathartic, as after all, family is our last refuge. I just wish the film, which is a brisk 83 minutes, spent less time on the plot and more on what happened to these two guys.