Don't Go Chasing Waterfalls

Jeff, Who Lives at Home

** out of ****

Directed by: Jay and Mark Duplass

Starring: Jason Segal, Ed Helms, Susan Sarandon, Judy Greer and Rae Dawn Chong

Running time: 84 minutes

Jeff, Who Lives at Home is a slight indie with modest charm that, like its drifting stoner protagonist, aims to be average. It succeeds on that level.

The title character is a happy shlump played with gawky sweetness by Jason Segal. Beyond locking himself in his mother’s basement to smoke weed, watch infomercials and avoid any form of work, Jeff is deeply interested in destiny and happenstance.

Jeff believes that series of random occurrences will eventually surmise into a moment of perfection. He would rather leave his own life’s path to faith than his own actions.

One afternoon, dressed in a dark grey sweatshirt and baggy shorts, destiny calls Jeff out of hibernation. Aimlessly drifting through Baton Rouge, he bumps into his brother, Pat (Ed Helms).

Although Pat is married and employed, he has not noticed that his wife, Linda (played by Judy Greer, charting similar territory to her recent turn in The Descendants), is unsatisfied with him. Pat has kept a closer eye on his bank account and recently bought a Porsche Boxster without Linda’s approval. He hears the brunt of her disgust regarding the two-seater over cereal.

Pat and Jeff do not get along, rarely see each other and have different outlooks on life – Pat is a pragmatist and Jeff an idealist. However, the brothers both shut out females who are close to them: Pat with Linda, and Jeff with his mother, a bored, cubicled near-retiree played by Susan Sarandon, whose subplot regarding a secret admirer is thin but amusing.

This exercise in ponderous ordinariness comes from the Duplass Brothers, whose films, like the ignored 2010 gem Cyrus, are stripped down yet awkwardly endearing comedy-dramas.

The Duplasses do not shoot their scenes as much as place the camera down and play around with the zoom button. Sometimes their reliance on this technique helps to get a sardonic reaction shot. In other times, it is jittery and irritating.

The Duplasses are wry observers of human behaviour, but their script for Jeff, Who Lives at Home is standard. The casting is both a strong point and a weakness for the film. Since the actors are playing characters similar to others in their oeuvres – Segal in Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Helms on The Office – their performances feel more rehashed than revitalizing.

The film’s tone is also off-putting. We start by laughing at the meek imperfections of the brothers, but as their heads collide and the film drifts into serious territory, the film keeps its light tone.

A tranquil jingle of a musical score plays in the background of nearly every scene, regardless of the mood, making later scenes disruptively tone-deaf. This makes way for a convenient, hackneyed, falsely uplifting ending.

The conclusion aims for catharsis, but doesn't flow of the rest of the film. It is a botched, lazy attempt to redeem the characters’ misdeeds that, unfortunately, does not feel earned.