JEFF WHO LIVES AT HOME

Not surprisingly, given its title, the film Jeff Who Lives at Home begins as if it were a by-thenumbers slacker-pothead comedy, with Jason Segel, as Jeff, who does indeed live at home (basement bedroom), giving a lengthy monologue on a recondite pop-cultural topic: his obsession with the M. Night Shyamalan-Mel Gibson movie, Signs. (See, in last month's Vanity Fair, "Much Ado About Nothing," S. L. Price's examination of Diner's impact on every movie ever made featuring young men at loose ends debating the fine points of old movies, records, and/or TV shows.) Nothing against slackerpothead comedies, a genre dear to my heart (on-screen more than in real life), but theaters have seen quite a few lately, and, happily, Jeff Who Lives at Home turns out be something more peculiar, in a good way: a contemporary fable about making connections in a random, or not so random, world. It's sly and bighearted, funny and moving, and probably a little corny, too—but smart-corny, if I may fuse a new adjective. Susan Sarandon, winsomely sexy at 65, co-stars as Jeff's exasperated mom, Sharon; Ed Helms (here playing closer to "asshole" than he usually does on the assholenerd spectrum) is Jeff's estranged brother, Pat; and Judy Greer, fuming pertly, plays Pat's estranged wife,

Linda. The writer-directors are the real-life brothers Jay and Mark Duplass; their previous film was Cyrus, another peculiar comedy whose protagonist (Jonah Hill) also lives at home with a hot single mom (Marisa Tomei). I smell a trilogy.

BRUCE HANDY

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