“Cyrus” is kind of like “Meet the Parents,” except instead of the parents it’s the child. And by child I mean a 21-year-old electric storm of strange who gives the film its title, played by a nearly spherical Jonah Hill, his eyes bugging with a combination of intensity and feigned ignorance.
The man who must meet Cyrus, tolerate him and compete with him for his mother’s affections is John (John C. Reilly), a sad resident of slackerdom since his split with Jamie (Catherine Keener), several years ago. She’s moved on, and she encourages John to do the same, finally, inviting him to her engagement party.
That party is an opportunity for Reilly to display the brand of endearing awkwardness he’s perfected, the one Hill and his fellow Judd Apatow protégés have inherited. But it’s also where John meets Molly (Marisa Tomei,) Cyrus’ mother. She stumbles across him as he’s peeing into a bush, the spark, naturally, of romance. Trying desperately to extinguish that spark is Cyrus, who still lives at home, playing New Age electronica and making the world a weirder place.
A quick plot summary suggests something like “Knocked Up,” an awkward comedy about inappropriate relationships without much heart or depth. But what you miss in the previews, perhaps by design, is that “Cyrus” cares about its characters.
Of course there are moments of absurdity, of raucous hilarity. Best among them is Cyrus, performing one of his spaced-out tunes for John, his face deadly serious as he plays the most ridiculously epic keyboard riff this side of “The Final Countdown.”
But John and Molly and even Cyrus are allowed to be real people, and Jay and Mark Duplass, who wrote and directed, commit to a calm, meandering pace that refuses to veer too far into contrivance for the sake of a gag.
The Duplass brothers come from the film tradition unofficially known as mumblecore, a low-budget style that emphasizes inarticulate, improvised dialogue. This is their first project with production value and recognizable actors, but the focus is still on a natural, glamour-less aesthetic. The cameras are still close, shaky and handheld.
So “Cyrus” is a film that wants to have it both ways, to be organic and realistic at times and exaggerated and absurd at others. But is life not that way too? Is that not what we mean when we say that the truth is often stranger than fiction? Is it not in some sense realistic to be not always realistic?
These are, of course, more serious questions than “Cyrus” intends to answer. But their casualness is one of the Duplass brothers’ greatest strengths, giving Reilly, Tomei and Hill room to stretch. Tomei’s character comes with the least depth written into it, but she fills it out enough to justify the great battle for her heart, making her the socially awkward Helen of Troy of the 21st century.
It is on Hill’s shoulders, though, that “Cyrus” rests ““ his flabby, undefined shoulders ““ and it seems undeniable that he is the more talented of the dweebish duo he formed with Michael Cera in “Superbad.”
He has parked himself perfectly at the crossroads between creepy and hilarious, but we knew that already. What we know now, from “Cyrus,” is that he’s capable of real, human feeling too. It’s hard to detect, buried beneath layers upon layers of Oedipal eccentricity, but it’s there. As far as coming-out parties go, this ranks among the strangest.