Mama’s Boy
Jon Heder, Diane Keaton, Jeff Daniels, Ana Faris
Directed by Tim Hamilton
Warner Home Video 2008
93 minutes
I hope Jon Heder gave his Mama’s Boy paycheck to charity because calling his performance acting is charitable. Napoleon Dynamite bombs in this pointless and laughless DVD ” comedy ” about a 29 year old boy who is jealous of his mom’s new beau: that’s it and that’s all you need to know.
Mama’s Boy is not even close to being original. It is in fact disturbing to see a 29 year old so in love with his mother he treats her like a child and becomes jealous of any happiness she may have. If Jeffrey Mannus (Heder) was not such a total prick this movie could have been watchable. I still fail to see how it could have been funny.
Diane Keaton must be really hard up to accept roles like Jan Mannus. As for Jeff Daniels, well, we are talking Jeff Daniels here: generic character equals generic actor.
Ana Faris is the only reason someone might sit through Mama’s Boy but you would really, really, really have to be an Ana Faris fan to self-inflict that kind of pain. Faris plays a singer songwriter inspired from Phoebe on Friends. For some hard to fathom notion she is interested in Jeffrey.
There are no laughs at all in this comedy. Jeffrey’s attempts at getting rid of his mother’s motivational speaker boyfriend are lame. The writing wouldn’t cut it on the back of a cereal box. There are too many scenes that feel like someone collaged the pages torn out from other movie scripts.
The expression Heder has on the cover of the Mama’s Boy DVD is the viewer’s while watching this.