Jeff, Who Lives at Home, is 30-something slacker propaganda disguised as a mopey indie flick. After first being introduced as a comical, delusional loaf (lazy oaf), we, the audience, spend the rest of a movie full of pat coincidences being programmed into believing Jeff is (somehow) right after all. About what, I don't know: apparently, the moral of the story is that we, of the slacker trade, must wait to hear our calling from the Universe, and when our calling comes we must be quick to the rescue. And our calling must be as dramatic and heroic as saving a family from a sinking car, after which we can return to our dull, infantile existence for the rest of our meaningless lives.
Jeff is an exaggeration; his brother is a cartoon. This is the sort of movie that because it is indie doesn't whore itself off to product placement but instead uses familiar products to give it the semblance of real life, which is in my mind equally as patronizing, especially when I am supposed to believe movie moguls Jason Segal or Susan Sarandon have any channel whatsoever to what is real life.
In a way, I felt like Susan Sarandon's character while watching this movie: superfluous, and easily manipulated by an exploiting presence to feel the heady pleasures of superficial, short-lived enjoyment, which like this movie lasted only 70 or so minutes, before reality set in and I realized what I watched was a perfectly contrived machine for making me feel this way... and absolutely nothing more.
Jeff is an exaggeration; his brother is a cartoon. This is the sort of movie that because it is indie doesn't whore itself off to product placement but instead uses familiar products to give it the semblance of real life, which is in my mind equally as patronizing, especially when I am supposed to believe movie moguls Jason Segal or Susan Sarandon have any channel whatsoever to what is real life.
In a way, I felt like Susan Sarandon's character while watching this movie: superfluous, and easily manipulated by an exploiting presence to feel the heady pleasures of superficial, short-lived enjoyment, which like this movie lasted only 70 or so minutes, before reality set in and I realized what I watched was a perfectly contrived machine for making me feel this way... and absolutely nothing more.