Sundance 2010: Cyrus

The Duplass brothers, Mark and Jay, first came to Sundance in 2005 with The Puffy Chair, a film that established them as leading lights of the emerging mumblecore scene, an ultra low-budget genre typified by extensive use of hand-held camera, semi-professional acting, lots of improvised action and even more talking, usually between people with relationship issues. With Cyrus they have technically sold out, since this Fox Searchlight production was not only bankrolled by The Man, it also boasts some serious mainstream stars in the central power trio of John C Reilly, Marisa Tomei and Superbad's Jonah Hill. If you've seen Lynn Shelton's rather awesome Humpday – wwhich featured Mark, the younger Duplass brother, in an acting capacity as a straight guy who sets out to make a gay porno movie with his best friend in order to make a “beautiful” art statement – you'll know what to expect. Though perhaps a little more sentimental than Shelton's film, Cyrus is one of those adorable, simple and smart little movies that makes you wonder why we can't make them like this in the UK.

The premise is straightforward enough: Reilly plays John, an LA-based film editor who has been living in a tailspin for seven years after splitting from his wife Jamie ( Catherine Keener). Jamie breaks the news that she is to marry her new boyfriend, and to keep John from getting depressed, Jamie invites him to a party where she assures him he'll meet lots of hot, intelligent and, most importantly, single women. So John goes, gets drunk, embarrasses himself, and just as he's about to give up after the second or third rejection he meets the beautiful Molly (Tomei), who seems to be smitten with John's self-deprecating honesty. They spend the night together, and everything seems fine... until John notices that Molly has a mysterious habit of leaving his bed in the middle of the night.

So he follows her, and while he's snooping around Molly's house he meets Cyrus (Hill), a pasty, moon-faced and apparently very earnest young man who reveals himself to be Molly's son. Cyrus is a lonely, nerdy individual who composes techno music in the front room, and when Molly comes home, unaware that John is there, it becomes clear that their bond is a close one. But as John is about to find out, Molly and Cyrus are a bit too close. And the closer John gets to Molly, the more Cyrus doesn't like it, secretly sabotaging the relationship while pretending to be thrilled about it.

Which, in a nutshell, is where the laughs in this warm lo-fi comedy come from: Reilly is just hysterical as the suspicious John, snooping around, trying to figure out how he can best this mommy's boy without alienating his girlfriend. Hill is terrific too, and his willingness to go so far in a role that emphasises all his least attractive physical attributes is only to be applauded, while Tomei shows herself as a very fine comic actress with a ditsy but unshowy performance that really grounds the movie.

Whether it will catch fire in the way Juno did is a moot point, but it could score a direct hit with that same audience. The language is pretty vulgar but the emotion is not, and although it does rally to a somewhat inevitable happy ending, the Duplasses do it as a favour to us, not as a product of formula – having spent so much time with these people, and liking them, we want everything to turn out for the best. How the Duplasses do it, I won't reveal, but it's fun and quite credible too. You should see it; Cyrus is a great date movie for couples of all ages.