Its a boy meets girl, boy meets girl's son, boy and girl's son have a battle of wits kind of movie - A review of Cyrus

So here's how it goes: Boy(John C. Reily) meets girl(Marisa Tomei looking as hot as ever. Boy meets girl's Son(Jonah Hill). Son hates boy. Cue plot here. We've seen this story before. So why is this movie any better? Well for starters Girl's Son(the title character Cyrus) is 21 and still lives with his mom. Him and his mom have a deep, best friend mentality. John is a divorcee but is still friends with his ex-wife. there is what amounts to a sub plot about her getting remarried but it doesn't amount to anything. What ensues in this movie is from the very moment Boy meets Son, Son is working to drive Boy away from Girl.

Let's start with the acting. It is without a doubt phenomenal. All three of the leads each act like it is going to cost them their lives to give good performances. You can tell there is some brilliant work going on between them. Each and every moment is earned and works. It is very rare that acting works this well. It helps that it is a small independent film with next to no cast. I large portion of the jokes and the moments and the timing are the actors and they work very well. In fact a minimal amount of the film is script. Clearly set changes are part of the script, but most of what happens in the scene is the actors. This movie lives and dies with the actors and they break the mold and give you a spectacular response. There are some very important moments that if they hadn't been sold by the actors most of the quiet moments where the film could have failed.

This movie fails in one area pretty epically. Directing. The directing is Terrible. This is deplorable. The look of the film, the mockumentery style without being a mockumentary doesn't work. In fact it looks like trash and feels like trash because of it. The only reason the movie isn't a total failure is that the acting and at time the writing is so out of the ball park that it gets you to forget that the film is so poorly shot. This is incredibly disappointing but at least it gets to showcase the actors talents.
So overall I will give this movie a B-. I want it to be better, but it's not. At the very least I can say that score is entirely the acting.