Review: Mama’s Boy (DVD)
Ever since his debut in the well-received Napoleon Dynamite, comic actor Jon Heder has been stuck in a series of low-budget comedies playing, essentially, the same slacker-loser-nerd character. Mama’s Boy isn’t the movie that is going to change Heder’s typecast career, but it is a movie with a bit more heart to it than some of the pale imitators that followed in the wake of Napoleon Dynamite.
This time out, Heder plays Jeffrey Mannus, a slacker-loser-nerd who, at 29, still lives with his mother and window-shops men’s jewelry. Heder knows his set up is sweet, but when his mother meets a motivational speaker who starts courting his mother, Jeffrey feels his set-up is threatened and begins to engage in the movie-world-typical war of undermining his mom’s suitor in ways that just never happen in real life. And of course, motivational speaker Mert responds in kind.
At this point there were two ways the movie could go; it could really ramp up the undermining hijinks of Jeffrey and Mert, pulling the movie in a Farrelly Brothers direction, and leaving any sense of real humanity behind for the rest of the film, or it could show some character growth. Unexpectedly, Mama’s Boy chooses the road less traveled: character growth.
This growth is, in part, sparked by the relationship Jeffrey suddenly finds himself forming with Nora, an anti-establishment singer-songwriter whose work is a bit over the top and ridiculous; yet the script ignores this and takes her career aspirations seriously in another atypical move for a Hollywood movie.
It’s as though Mama’s Boy is the result of a collaboration between two completely different writers; one, a Farrally Brothers wannabe and the other striving to be the next William Goldman. The result is a watchable movie that, although enjoyable, seems to be suffering from a greater identity crisis than its main character.
Does Mama’s Boy want to be a rolling-in-the-aisles gross-out comedy? Then its script is far too humane and takes its characters too seriously. Does Mama’s Boy want to be more of a thoughtful comedy-slash-social commentary? Then why have Anna Farris perform songs that wouldn’t even be good enough to get her in to be ridiculed by Simon, Randy and Paula?
The movie is pleasant enough in a quiet kind of way, but lacks the punch to be either one type of movie or another. The end result’s middle-of-the-road approach leaves the viewer feeling like it’s a cinematic experience that never fully realized its potential.
