  John C. Reilly and Jonah Hill star in Cyrus. 
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Moviegoers love to laugh at grown men who need to, well, grow up. So you can be forgiven for assuming Cyrus -- with Superbad's Jonah Hill as a 21-year-old pitted against the middle-aged sad-sack who's dating his mom -- is a big, farcical celebration of arrested development. In fact, it's more a study in wondering if you're going to wake up with a knife in your chest.
The aforementioned forty-something single guy is John (an excellent John C. Reilly), a lonely, downtrodden divorcee who meets spirited, sensual Molly (Marisa Tomei) while he's drunkenly urinating into some bushes at a party. He's already struck out with multiple women but despite his lumbering social ineptitude, Molly is smitten.
What's wrong with her? Or more precisely, who is wrong with her? John eventually finds out when he meets Cyrus, her unemployed, rudderless, too-close-for-comfort adult son. How close is too close? He still lives with her. He was homeschooled. They snuggle. And he casually walks into the bathroom while she's having a shower.
Granted, Cyrus acts politely enough upon meeting John, but it's not difficult to recognize the malice simmering, perhaps murderously, behind his passive, wide-eyed glare. And thus a battle of psyches is engaged; winner, we assume rather disturbingly, takes Molly.
That bare-bones description may make Cyrus sound like yet another cheerless Hollywood goof-off devoid of humanity. You don't have to crane your neck far at the multiplex to picture the potential results, considering Adam Sandler's latest is entitled Grown Ups. Who needs flatulence jokes when you can have incest gags?
Fortunately Cyrus is more resonant and surprising than that, a disquieting tightrope act of tone, tension and unexpected tenderness.
For that credit, writers-directors Mark and Jay Duplass (Baghead, The Puffy Chair), perpetrators of what's known as mumblecore -- a bare-bones style of low-budget filmmaking that leans towards improvisation over scripted pre-ordination.
Having performers this gifted helps immeasurably. Reilly, for one, has always been an actor who makes each performance appear effortless. His casting here, as the epitome of clueless despair, is inspired.
Tomei, who's more luminous now than she was two decades ago in My Cousin Vinny, is so appealing that you don't question John's ill-advised decision to stay with her, despite the Cyrus factor. Best of all, though, is Hill, whose indecipherable, unsettling work represents a serious career breakthrough.
To be sure, the movie -- as mumblecore does -- will have its detractors. What some will relate to as authentic and real, others will dismiss as sluggish and meandering. But in a summer besieged by empty spectacles and plastic sitcom lameness, Cyrus emerges as a daring, disarming alternative.
(This film is rated 14A)
kevin.williamson@sunmedia.ca
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