Only John C. Reilly could give the line: “Are you flirting with me? I’m Shrek. What are you doing out here in the forest with Shrek?”. As sad-sack divorce John, Reilly awkwardly stumbles into a relationship that is too good to be true with Molly (Marisa Tomei), a pretty, funny, and smart woman who finds John’s needy insecurities charmingly honest. Molly has it all, and John cannot believe his good fortune. So it does not take long before his search for trouble finds it in the form of Molly’s adult son Cyrus (Jonah Hill). Cyrus correctly recognizes John as a threat to his monopoly on the affection of his mother and is determined to undermine their relationship.
This is pretty easy for Cyrus because he is his mother’s one gigantic glaring fault. In her eyes, he can do no wrong. Since Cyrus is pretty weird, one wonders where Molly’s friends have been for the last 20 years. It’s hard to believe no one ever had a little heart to heart with her about her unhealthy relationship with her son. John, thankfully, eventually gets the chance to do just that. John has a strange relationship of his own: Catherine Keener plays his infinitely patient ex-wife whom John regularly hits up for emotional support. The movie is enjoyable. I would call it a character study, but the movie doesn’t give us much insight into the back stories of John, Cyrus, and Molly so that we can understand where the characters are coming from.