Momma's Man

Having gone to Sundance for the last several years, I am always looking for the same thing, a movie that will truly inspire me not only as a person but as an artist as well, and every year I find it gets harder and harder to find such a film. This year that film was Momma's Man. The film was heartfelt, funny at times, and incredibly poignant. All the performances, were very real and nuanced. I especially loved the actors who played Mikey's parents. They seemed to have come from an Elaine May or Cassavettes(john not nick) film. I almost expected Gena Rowlands to make a cameo as the next door neighbor. What I enjoyed most about Momma's Man that it felt honest in a way that a lot of movies today don't seem to be. There was no artifice, there was no talking down to the audience. Instead, the director let me experience, not just watch, but experience the emotional journey that Mikey took. I wish more movies would do the same.

This is simply one of the finest independent films I've ever seen, a story told with minimal dialogue but maximum heart and soul. Anyone who can't understand why Mikey is scared to leave his parents' home (and there seem to be a few of those shallow folks writing on this board) should get into therapy right away. In any case, Azazel Jacobs has remarkable insight and considerable writing and directorial skill, and his parents are wonderful as the parents in the film. Meanwhile, Matt Boren seems not to be getting enough praise for his amazing performance as Mikey. He's a fine and resourceful actor with a very expressive face. This movie is marvelous, and a completely must-see.

I saw this movie at Sundance Film Festival last night and it was horrible.

This is the story of a guy with no life and no personality who can't face his own problems and instead refuses to leave his parent's apartment.

The plot drags along and the characters are painfully boring and uninteresting.

Dozens of theatergoers walked out in the middle of this film and I wish I had, I'm not going to be getting that time back.

Do yourself a favor and go see one of the other great independent films traveling the film festival circuit and dump this disaster.

With Momma's Man, Azazel Jacobs has shattered the promise of his wildly impressive The GoodTimesKid and delivered a statement of personal artistic expression so profound and moving that I am still holding back tears days after having seen it. While Jacobs' film addresses many different issues and themes, for me what makes it so tear jerking is that it is the most beautiful and touching love letter to one's parents (and, in turn, one's childhood home) that I have ever watched, heard, or read. Momma's Man is more than just a transcendent, extraordinary achievement in low-budget film-making. It is a work of rare, true artistry. I came to the 2008 Sundance Film Festival hoping to walk away with a film that I could champion. While I discovered a small handful of superior, exhilarating work, Momma's Man is the type of experience that I wouldn't have dreamed was imaginable. I have never been so affected by a motion picture in my life. I don't want to merely champion this film. I want to order every single person I know to see it. I want to scream at every single distributor to buy it. I want to watch it again right now. Until then, I will replay it in my mind and let new tears stream down my awed, thankful face.

read the rest of the review here: http://www.hammertonail.com/?p=37

Living away from parents, having a job, a wife, and children are ingredients that suggest maturity but do not guarantee it. Mikey (Matt Boren), a recently married man in his thirties, comes from California to visit his parents in New York and falls into a psychological paralysis that keeps him from accepting the reality of his adult life. Shot in the actual loft on Chambers Street in which he grew up, native New York director Azazel Jacobs' extraordinary Momma's Man zeroes in on our inability to let go, complete the past, and move on. While his wife Laura (Dana Varon) and their infant daughter wait for him in California, Mikey returns from the airport to his parent's home, invents a story that the flight was canceled because of mechanical problems, and stays and stays. Ignoring his wife's urgent phone messages, he convinces himself that it is okay to stay for a while.

Jacobs, the son of experimental film director Ken Jacobs, has created a character in Mikey who has obvious problems yet whose sweetness reaches out to us even if we do not fully understand the source of his aberration or even believe that he could really be the son of two very intellectual artists, Ken and Flo (played by Jacobs' real parents). Settling into the claustrophobic yet oddly comforting environment of his childhood loft filled with gadgets, trinkets, paintings, and sculptures, he rummages through old letters, comic books, toys and the paraphernalia of his childhood, contacts an old high school girl friend to apologize for something the girl has completely forgotten about, visits a friend to watch old boxing videos, and takes up his guitar to sing a lame high-school song while mom and dad are trying to sleep.

Though mom and dad sense that something is wrong and ask him repeatedly what's going on, he tells them that he is fine, refusing to confront his demons. When pressed about his relationship, he makes up an affair for his wife as the reason he needs time away from her. Soon he is physically unable to leave the apartment and walk down the stairs to the street even though he fortifies himself with half a bottle of wine. Though his parents are caring, there is no truth telling and no sense of urgency. His mother offers him cereal with fruit and tells him that he can stay as long as he wants but seems unable to grasp the fact that he is sinking into a black hole.

Momma's Man is not just a film about pathology, however, but about universal human longing that has enough touches of humor that some have even called it a comedy. Whatever the genre you ascribe it to, it is a film of rare honesty and naturalness that hits us where it hurts. What makes it so unsettling is that Jacobs has reached a part of us that yearns to relive the warm comforts of childhood when all we had to do to feel self worth was to crawl into our mother's lap and close our eyes. Unlike Mikey, however, most of us can open our eyes, walk down the stairs and out the front door without looking back.