CYRUS

“CYRUS” (John C. Reilly, Marisa Tomei & Jonah Hill)

John C. plays John (middle initial unknown) a likeable goof who describes himself as a human ‘Shrek’. When Shrek meets Molly (Marisa Tomei) at a party, he is instantly smitten. The weird part is, she’s attracted to him as well. What’s not to love? After all she catches him peeing in the bushes for their first encounter.
John/Shrek & Molly get drunk & end up having sex. John calls Molly the next morning, they make a date for that evening & they have sex again. John then turns into a creepy stalker as he follows Molly home & camps outside her house. Later, when he approaches the house, he meets Molly’s son, Cyrus (Jonah Hill) who invites the stranger into his mother’s home & they spend the day together until Molly arrives. To Shrek’s credit, at least he owns up to ‘stalking’ her as the reason why he knew where she lived.
But here’s why I came to hate this movie instead of merely finding it boring – Almost the entire movie is filmed in extreme close-ups... So we’re talking extreme close-ups of John C. Reilly & Jonah Hill – 2 guys you want to view from as far away as possible & we’re subjected to JCR’s huge bulbous, Karl Malden, Jr-type nose & Hill’s enormous double chin (I’m sure he had several of them at one time but the biggest one ate the others)
And it gets worse – in every scene there’s a quick zoom in. So we start with a close up on John & Molly & for no reason whatsoever the camera zips in a couple of feet & stops.
This happens in every scene, sometimes several times in each one. It was so annoying, I waited to see the name of the camera operator but got as bored reading the credits as I did watching the movie & left. I’m sure my friend dbm knows who worked the camera for this, so I’m relying on him to tell me his name so I can avoid any of his future films. I don’t know why, but I’m thinking his name might be Nelson Muntz...
I went to see ‘Cyrus’ because I was hoping for a dark comedy – but nothing dark nor funny happens. It sets up as a possible good film but never pays off with a ‘wow’ sick moment or a single humorous line.
The fact that it is dominated by close-ups & zooms gives you no perspective of reality. This is purely a character-driven story so it should be told in a realistic way & it is not.
The only time I laughed is when a shot of a cell phone on a table was shown & then zoomed in on. By that point it had become ludicrous...
I would describe the acting as being unimpressive; since the story became bogged down in blandness, I’d say the cast has to take some of the blame for that, including Catherine Keener as John’s ex-wife.
You wonder why a decent looking chick like Marisa would instantly fall for a Shrek until you realize he probably reminded her of her chubby creepy son. The problem was, neither John nor Cyrus were creepy enough, just mildly weird to the point where you didn’t want to spend any time with these slightly creepy but very boring people...