Give Jay and Mark Duplass a hand for taking Fox Searchlight’s dime and giving them back a cringe-comedy about a likeable schlub (Reilly), his new dream girlfriend (Tomei) and her vengeful, clingy adult-olescent son (Hill) that’s essentially an ever-so-slightly polished Duplass brothers movie. You can spot tiny concessions, but the directors’ offbeat, underground-ish sensibility punctures the mainstream qualities while keeping things palatable.
It’s a rare tale of Oedipal one-upmanship that’s charming, comically sharp and creepy in equal measures, helped by actors tuned in to the filmmakers’ oddball frequency. Neither Reilly nor Tomei have ever seemed so effortlessly funny, and whoever thought to cast one of Judd Apatow’s regulars as a dysfunctional manchild should be dubbed a genius.
