Film

It’s hard not to think of a certain writer-director known for schlubby, full-frontal dudity as you watch Azazel Jacobs’s lo-fi gem; though you won’t find Judd Apatow’s name anywhere in the credits, this indie flick could be seen as a downtown-deadpan answer film to Apatow’s blockbuster beta-male celebrations. Thanks to the Knocked Up auteur, Hollywood has come to embrace these modern-day Peter Pans as geeky sex symbols, a concept this poignant look at Y-chromosome regression gently corrects. The sad sack at the center of Jacobs’s character study isn’t hooking up with Katherine Heigl; he’s a guy stuck in a serious rut.

Having come back to New York for a business trip, Mikey (Boren) indefinitely extends his stay with Mom and Pop (played by Azazel’s real parents, Flo and Ken “Star Spangled to Death” Jacobs; the set is the actual Jacobs family loft in Tribeca). When he’s not making excuses to his wife (Varon), at home in California with their baby, Mikey is reworking songs he wrote in high school (sample lyric: “I fucking hate you, too”), reading comic books in his underwear or hanging out with an equally lost old friend. Mom offers to make him tea every two minutes; Dad just benignly scowls. Meanwhile, Mikey continues to do…nothing.

Jacobs doesn’t shy away from cracking jokes—one scene will make you reconsider the universal appeal of the Indigo Girls’ “Closer to Fine”—but the lack of either condescension toward or glamorization of Mikey’s existential free fall sets Momma’s Man apart from the manchild movie pack. The film doesn’t indict society for turning a generation of males into oversize infants so much as dive headfirst into the confusion that causes such men to burrow into childhood 2.0. That you still walk away sympathizing with the pathetic Mikey is a testament to both Boren’s close-to-the-bone performance and Jacobs; for a young filmmaker whose previous movie, The GoodTimesKid, suggested he was a precocious talent, this moody, pitch-perfect ode to immaturity ironically proves he’s finally grown up.