Search for meaning takes 'Jeff' on comic journey
The smart, surprisingly poignant indie comedy "Jeff, Who Lives at Home" tells the story of four main characters, hopelessly mired in the present, who need to get off their butts and make their lives work for them.
These quietly desperate characters - a mother, her two sons and a daughter-in-law - seem to realize they're trapped in the quicksand of day-to-day inertia and don't really know how to get out.
Not until Jeff goes to buy some wood glue, then becomes distracted on an absurd journey following divine signs he thinks will show him the way to the destiny he so hopes to discover.
Jeff, played by the likable Jason Segel, is an overgrown kid at 30. His father has died and Jeff's still living at home with an enabling mom Sharon (an ageless Susan Sarandon).
In a hilarious voice-over, Jeff explains the reason for his belief that there must be order to the chaos in the universe: M. Night Shyamalan's science-fiction thriller "Signs" proves that everything in life happens for a purpose.
On her birthday, Sharon sends a reluctant Jeff to the hardware store for glue to fix a shutter, but a simple wrong-number phone call propels him on a quest all over Baton Rouge, where, in another part of town, his brother Pat (Ed Helms) has purchased a Porsche without consulting his distraught wife, Linda (the amazing Judy Greer).
Clearly stuck in adolescent self-centeredness, Pat has no clue how to relate to his unhappy wife, who appears to be considering an affair just to enjoy some intimate company her husband no longer provides.
Pat's crazy plan to have Jeff sneak into a cafe booth and spy on Linda and her male friend (Steve Zissis) borders on a zany farce.
But "Jeff, Who Lives at Home" sidesteps conventional jokes and comic setups. Its humor arises from our coming to know these characters and watching how they react to the extreme situations of their own creation.
Linda's potential affair snaps Pat into momentary self-awareness, just as that phone call pushes Jeff out of his couch potato comfort zone.
Meanwhile, Sharon gets shaken out of her daily malaise at the office by a mystery "secret admirer" who's sending her enticing instant messages from somewhere nearby. Sharon is leery, yet totally flattered by the attention, feelings she shares with her trusted office buddy Carol (Rae Dawn Chong).
Segel, fresh from his role as the star of "The Muppets," becomes the heart of the story with his childlike protagonist, searching for purpose in the wake of his father's death.
"You and Mom will never understand me!" he cries to brother Pat, "and you're all I have left!"
"Jeff" could have slipped into easy sentiment with the brothers coming together in one cosmic hug, but it never happens like that.
"Jeff, Who Lives at Home" comes the closest to a conventional comedy from the Duplass brothers, Mark and Jay, whose first movie "The Puffy Chair" reveled in rejecting traditional Hollywood filmmaking techniques by leaving in unfocused shots, allowing subjects to drop out of frame and using more extreme, zip-zoom shots than the Japanese "Godzilla" movies ever did.
The brothers wisely dump the more distracting flourishes here, although Jas Shelton's HD camera work retains the in-and-out quick-zooms that might prompt a hit of Dramamine by viewers.
"Jeff" supplies an oddly satisfying reaffirmation that its characters do in fact possess a purpose, revealed in an unexpected crisis.
But the movie never loses its delightful quirkiness, an edgy, unHollywood-like vibe that gives its unlikely story a veneer of comic plausibility.
“Jeff, Who Lives at Home”
★ ★ ★ ½
Starring: Jason Segel, Judy Greer, Ed Helms, Susan Sarandon
Directed by: Jay Duplass and Mark Duplass
Other: A Paramount Vantage release. Rated R for language and drug use. 83 minutes