I didn't really have any expectations for Cyrus, but it wasn't at all what I expected, nonetheless. After watching the movie, that kind of sentence fits in perfectly with a review of said character study, generally billed as a "dark, romantic comedy" which highlights John C. Reilly and Jonah Hill but not in the ways you are used to seeing them. Filmed in a combination of closeup handheld shots and broad panning, the film is an intimate study of what it takes to be in relationship and how those relationships change over time.

I am neither a huge fan of Reilly or Hill, but I thought this would be funny. I figured a Talledega Nights/Superbad mashup might result, and instead I got something akin to the black comedies that Danny DeVito seems to push out every few years. Sure, there are some funny bits, but Reilly's seven-years-divorced loser, John, is anything but heroic or funny. He's pathetic and slovenly, but his endearing trait (if there is one) is that he knows himself. He knows he is miserable, lonely, needy, and sad, and he can articulate it with clear attention to the current situation.

But soon, John meets Marisa Tomei's Molly and falls hard for her. They spend a night together in all of the various ways that can mean, but more important than the sex is that Molly seems to "get" John. But part of that might be that she has an awkward (to us, the audience) relationship with her son Cyrus (Hill), spending too much time together with him in... close proximity. Cyrus initially welcomes John in but grows hostile when he sees that John could be a threat to his time with his mother, and the aggressive behavior escalates.

Seriously, reading these last few lines, you might think we're talking Psycho/Single White Son but the tone is always more about the characters internally and less about their actions. That's the interesting/admirable part of the story, that the filmmakers made something introspective and internal, but somehow I just could never get into the story itself. I could never actually "care" about the characters, other than to be bothered by Cyrus. Again, we've seen movies about the way that grown children won't move out of their parents' houses, but this raises that to a whole new level and makes it about a twenty-one-year-old guy who sometimes looks a lot like his mother's suitor.

This one wasn't laugh-out-loud funny but it does serve as a warning that "there is a time for everything under heaven" means you're not supposed to live in your parents' house forever!