Cyrus

With the likes of John C. Reilly and Jonah Hill competing for the attentions of Marisa Tomei, the Duplass brothers’ new film looks to be an oddball sort of romantic comedy. John (Reilly) is a sad-sack divorcée who stumbles into unexpected romance with single mom Molly (Tomei), who is similarly lonely and forlorn. When John moves in with Molly, he is also moving in with Cyrus (Hill), Molly’s clingingly devoted young-adult son. Inevitably, the peculiarities of that prolonged mother-son relationship make for some complications in the John-Molly relationship, but it’s not until John begins to pick up on Cyrus’ elaborately sublimated hostility toward him that things really get sticky. Hill’s deadpan Cyrus is an overgrown adolescent, weirdly buffoonish in a wise-child way but also a bit psycho at times. The main plot thread weaves its way around and through this Cyrus-centered crisis, but the real narrative spark in the film comes from the interplay among a set of charmingly needy characters, each of whom is half-cracked in one way or another as well as a would-be lover scrambling for connections. Pageant Theatre. Rated R