Brothers Jay and Mark Duplass still don’t make mainstream movies. But, with their last movie, Cyrus, and this film, Jeff, Who Lives at Home, they appear to be moving toward making movies with bigger budgets and more mainstream actors. Gone are the days where they seemingly filmed their projects in their own homes, and guerrilla-style in any public spaces they could get away with. Gone are the days where the performers they’re working with are whichever of their actor friends they could get to commit. Jeff, Who Lives at Home stars big names like Jason Segel, Ed Helms, and Susan Sarandon, and it looks like a slick, Hollywood product. That doesn’t mean the brothers have gone back on their commitment to making loosely scripted films that experiment with the limits of improvisational acting, however. On the contrary, Jeff, Who Lives at Home may be the weirdest and most experimental film they’ve made yet.
Our main character is Jeff (Segel), who lives in his mother’s basement, and who is drifting through life directionless, in a desperate search for meaning and purpose. He has a brother named Pat (Helms), who rocketed off in the wrong direction as fast as he could and now finds himself in a bad marriage and having accrued bad debt, but still pretty oblivious to the grimness of things. Jeff and Pat have a mother, Sharon (Susan Sarandon), who can’t figure out how her sons turned into such hopeless goons, and who seems to be on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Though Jeff hasn’t found his place in the world, he isn’t the type to just wallow in complacency, never coming out of his basement dwelling and eating up all his time with nerdly pursuits; he’s looking for meaning in anything, and consequently is always chasing after nothing.
Any number he sees twice in a day, any chance encounter he has with a stranger; they could all be the potential signal the universe is trying to send him to clue him in on what his destiny is. On this particular day Jeff’s journeys lead him to a chance encounter with his brother in a Hooters parking lot, and to the revelation that his brother’s wife (Judy Greer) has been having an affair. Mission in hand, Jeff and Pat set off to follow the adulterous couple, figure out what exactly is going down, and try to work out what to do about it. For Pat, this might be the end of his life, but for Jeff, it’s clearly the beginning of something very important.
A story running concurrently, featuring Sarandon’s character, takes place entirely in the office in which she works. Her life has become a frustrating, pointless thing that leads to her feeling hopeless and lonely more than anything else. This starts to change, however, when she starts to receive anonymous and flirtatious messages over the company’s computer network. Who is this mysterious stranger? What new possibilities might this flirtation introduce to her? We watch as Sarandon comes to life because of the new stimulus.
This segment played a little more uneven to me than the one featuring Segel and Helms. Sharon’s loneliness is well established, but the way in which she so enthusiastically welcomes the fairly creepy flirtations that come her way still seemed a little off. She immediately threw all of her hopes into the possibility that these weird messages would lead to something great, and that felt like too much naiveté to come from a woman of her age. Especially after raising a couple of high maintenance children like Jeff and Pat, I would expect her to have a stronger bullshit detector than she does. Still, Sarandon plays the character well, and the subplot ends up going interesting places, so it’s hard to complain.
Segel and Helms are both strong in their roles as well, and the level of acting on display here really becomes one of Jeff, Who Lives at Home’s great strengths. Segel is so funny and likable that he can pretty much just stand there smirking to himself and make anything entertaining. That becomes a huge asset here, because Jeff often behaves in ridiculous ways, and he really needed an actor who was inherently charming to bring him to life. In other hands he could have come off as slovenly and irritating. Helms is usually cast playing the overly earnest dope, and it was nice to see him playing against type here. He shows that he can work just as well playing the cynic and the straight man. Pat starts the film off as an insufferable goon, making dumb decisions and acting superior to the people around him, but thanks to Helms’ approach you end the movie really rooting for him. One of his big strengths as an actor, which he utilizes here, is his ability to project vulnerability. He can be as awful as he wants, and you still don’t completely blame him, because you see it’s all coming from a place of pain (and how gross does he look wearing that goatee? Yuck!).
Without performances this great, from actors this likable, I could really have seen this film turning into a train wreck. All of the characters we’re focused on are lost in some way, and it makes the movie feel kind of lost as well. There isn’t a direct plot thread that we’re following toward an inevitable goal. We spend much of the movie alongside these people, wandering and confused, and things can feel a little aimless in the second act. This is a weird, slow-paced story, and it’s going to be a challenge for a portion of the audience to get through. But, despite some moments where you question the point of what you’re watching, it’s always intriguing and funny enough that I don’t think it should actually lose anyone by the end. And trust that it’s all leading somewhere. These vague, disparate stories do all intersect and go somewhere worthwhile, and the results of that are enough to leave you feeling pretty warm and fuzzy.
This may be a movie about these three characters’ specific journeys, but really it’s a universal one about navigating your way through life. Jeff is grasping at straws, always trying to pick meaning out of nothing. But isn’t that what we’re all doing? Your passion, your purpose, your fate is probably all just a bunch of bullshit, but the secret is believing in it. You need to pick a direction and get moving, even if you’re fooling yourself. Otherwise you’ll just be sitting still. Pat reveals to us the next possible problem along your journey. What if you’ve picked the wrong road? At that point at least you’ve explored a bit, and you have the knowledge to recalibrate your direction. The secret is to look at everything you’ve done and decide how much of it has really been important. Hone in on that and leave everything else behind. Finally, Sharon serves as our last warning. Never start to feel like you’ve reached the end of your journey, or you’ll just find yourself right back at the beginning; confused and listless. Always keep moving, always keep changing, otherwise you’re dead.
These aren’t big life lessons that the movie hammers into your head though; they’re just some random thoughts I find rattling around in my mind after having seen it. Jeff, Who Lives at Home is stupid fun, but it gets you thinking a little bit, and it might even inspire you to go out and do something crazy. All of the talk about destiny, fate, and what we’re supposed to be getting out of life works here precisely because it isn’t to be taken seriously. This isn’t something like The Number 23, where we’re chasing down the mystical forces that control the universe. Jeff’s way of looking at the world is ridiculous. But whatever works is good enough. The secret is just getting out of that basement every day and trying.
