Arrested Development

Three’s company: Mikey (Matt Boren), left, with his parents (Flo and Ken Jacobs) in “Momma’s Man,” which is much more deeply felt than the snarky comedies that are the norm this summer.

Three’s company: Mikey (Matt Boren), left, with his parents (Flo and Ken Jacobs) in “Momma’s Man,” which is much more deeply felt than the snarky comedies that are the norm this summer.

by George Robinson
Special To The Jewish Week

It was only on second viewing that I realized how deeply serious Azazel Jacobs’ new film “Momma’s Man” is. When I first saw the film, which opens on Aug. 22 at the Angelika Film Center, it was one of the delights of the New Directors/New Films series this spring, a chipper comedy about a schlemiel in the Judd Apatow-Seth Rogen mode. But when I saw the film again shortly before its theatrical opening, it suddenly looked like a much darker film, tinged with the realization of its central character’s sadness and foolishness, a sense of the pain his irresponsibility has caused those around him, in short, a devastating critique of the Apatow-Rogen reign of the big babies.
I don’t know if Jacobs had any of

this in mind when he sat down to make “Momma’s Man.” For all I know, he just wanted to make a gentle comedy about an immature man who suddenly realizes that he doesn’t want to be an adult with a job, a wife and a child. But the resulting film is much more deeply felt than that, much more deeply felt than the snarky comedies that are the norm this summer.

The plot of “Momma’s Man” is simplicity itself. Mikey (Matt Boren) has been visiting his parents in New York City while on a business trip. The day he is supposed to return home he takes the A train as far as the shuttle to JFK and finds himself utterly incapable of getting off the subway; he returns to his parents’ downtown loft and makes an excuse about a foul-up by the airline. And he stays. And stays. And stays. His wife Laura (Dana Varon) becomes increasingly frantic. Mom (Flo Jacobs) and Dad (Ken Jacobs) are accepting but perturbed. Gradually, things begin to unravel and Mikey’s behavior becomes odder and odder.
From the film’s first shot, a close-up of two people’s hands clasped together that, as Jacobs gradually reveals, belong to Mikey and his mother, we have a sense that Mikey has a lot of growing up to do. Even his name, the childish diminutive by which everyone in the film calls him, marks him as an outsized adolescent. And in the giddy clutter of his parents’ loft with its profusion of wind-up toys, antique optical devices and the like, Mikey and his childhood lair are just so much more stuff.
Throughout the film, Jacobs will place Mikey in the midst of the detritus of his childhood; in an early shot we see him from behind wearing an undersized superhero cape. Returning to the family home is a way of becoming mired in the quicksand of adolescence, left undisturbed all these years by his parents. And Jacobs underlines the dilemma with frequent shots of Mikey hemmed in by the architecture of the loft and its contents, reduced to another piece of the collection.

For the first half of the film, this is quite funny — not falling-down-laughing funny but sweet-dopey funny, in no small part thanks to Boren’s performance and his interaction with Flo and Ken Jacobs, Azazel’s real-life parents. (In fact, talking with Azazel’s famous filmmaker father last month, I got the impression that the original impetus behind the project was the Jacobs’ famous loft, although he was happy to enlist his parents to play the film’s older couple. Ken emphatically said that the film isn’t autobiographical, and one cannot imagine Mikey having the energy or perseverance to put together an indie feature film, let alone the three that Jacobs has already made.)
Flo and Ken are splendid in their mix of affection and concern and they are responsible for several of the film’s most telling moments.

At a point approximately midway through the film, the tone begins to darken. A moment that might have seemed funny before — Mikey begins to apply shaving cream to his face, having grown several days worth of stubble, only to cover his entire face — suddenly feels disturbing in its combination of childishness and loss of control. Jacobs presents his protagonist as increasingly immobile, trapped in the apartment like someone in the throes of agoraphobia. And we are made more aware of Laura’s helplessness, a continent away and unable to get her husband to return phone calls.
Out of this growing sense of despair, Jacobs manages one last, very funny moment, when Mikey foolishly (and ineptly) tries to throw himself down the stairs; it is an unlikely source of humor but one of the biggest laughs in the film ensues.
“Momma’s Man” manages to sidestep all the clichés of the American indie film about dysfunctional families. The parents are sound, sober and loving, with just a hint of detachment. Mikey’s home life in L.A. isn’t a caricature. There are no revelations of twisted sexuality (a plot device that has become the indie equivalent of having someone pull a gun during a lull), and the film is neither a validation nor an indictment of slackers, stoners and dead-enders with McJobs.

What the film does, in its intelligent and understated way, is to take the arrested development case that has been valorized by recent American films and show us the human cost of his willed immaturity and self-absorption, with the stern but understanding affection of a parent. n

“Momma’s Man” opens Friday, Aug. 22 at Angelika Film Center (18 W. Houston St.). For information, (212) 995-2000 or go to www.angelikafilmcenter.com.

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