This is an extra long and angsty review. I really, really didn't like this movie at all. For those who dare, read through my rant, but the rating is just below.

3 out of 10 - Badly developed story, amateur feel with the editing and music ... just rubbish.

CAST: John C Reilly - John
Marisa Tomei - Molly
Jonah Hill - Cyrus

PLOT: A recently divorced guy meets the woman of his dreams. Then he meets her son.

Part I: The Advertising. (I'm doing this review Star Wars Review style).

Well ... I wonder if they got that plot line from the company responsible for advertising this, too? According to the story, John had been divorced from his wife for 7 years when he meets Molly. That's not recent.

Ok, so let me bitch a bit about the advertising for this movie. This has to be some of the worst advertising ever done. I mean, even that plot line, which I believe was official, indicates a rom-com of some kind. Something funny, humorous. The trailer certainly indicated a humorous romp. But it's just not funny. It's not even meant to be, I don't think. Maybe it is ...

I mean, from a humor perspective, all the funny scenes in this movie are in the trailer. I don't think there's anything funny in it that wasn't featured in the trailer. Usually that type of statement is accompanied by exaggeration, but I'm just telling it straight. The scene where John threatens Cyrus, the scene where John and Cyrus first meet, the scene where John and Molly about to bang and Cyrus turns on the light.

...The wedding fight scene actually isn't funny, though that is one of the few other gripping parts of the film, also given away in the trailer. Congrats advertisement.

But the thing is, I'm not sure if it's advertisements fault, see, they probably watched this movie and realized what a pile of junk they had on their hands and very purposely advertised it the way they did. Big names, rom-com ... it'll make enough money. I think if they advertised it as a coming of age drama about Cyrus it would've bombed horribly, because it's a bad film.

Part 2: The Story

The story ... if Cyrus was the main character they really didn't focus on him enough. In a lot of ways this feels like a coming of age film, except we never really see Cyrus' point of view, and we're never alone with him, we really don't get to know him very well at all. Molly and John are the main characters who get most of the screen time. There's never any tension between them, all the tension is centered around Cyrus and yet he's not featured nearly enough.

The movie builds absolutely no momentum. It's pacing is horrible. As I just mentioned, all the tension is built around Cyrus. His conflict with John and his destructive attachment to Molly, and yet, early on, he moves out of the house. What? In hindsight, I'm saying this ... WHAT? Why move out the only character who can develop tension in your plot. Instead he moves out, and we watch John and Molly develop their relationship some more.

I mean, it was already developed, did we need additional time to set up for the audience that ... "They're in love."? We get it. Was the purpose of having Cyrus move out so that John moving into the house would seem more plausible, and was John living in the house remotely important to this story's conflict? (The answer's no, you could have had plenty of tension between Cyrus and John without it). I mean, that whole section of the movie is nothing more than piss-poor writing/direction/whichever, in my opinion.

Also, after he moves back in, they choose to start the conflict between John and Cyrus ... I mean, it's too late by this time anyway, you've already had 30-45 minutes of exposition, and now you're going to unleash the main conflict of the movie? Idiocy. I mean, either they make the movie really long to really explore and develop the relationships, or they have everything come to a head really fast.

They chose the latter. There's a grand total of two scenes in the movie where John and Cyrus confront each other, the first is meant to be funny, but, because you've seen it in previews a bunch, you're kind of like, oh yeah, that happened, again ... and the second ... John threatens to knock Cyrus out. That's serious. That wasn't awkward funny at all, it was kind of scary and tense.

Cyrus never actually does anything once John realizes what's up (i.e., once the conflict has been started), so ... what's the point again? I was advertised a kind of cat/mouse game. One-up-man-ship that would come to a broiling head, at which point Molly would figure out what was going on, huge fight, break up, then, thinking, Cyrus grows up a little, they get back together.

Instead just two scenes of conflict between John and Cyrus, and then they fight at the wedding. The climax to this movie was really not very, climatic. Oh, now they're fighting. Of course Cyrus pretends (or maybe not) to be hurt. I mean, we don't know if John actually hit him, John doesn't defend himself. Cyrus pretends to be hurt and maybe is ... it's never really resolved what happened.

John tells Molly the truth, him and her son hate each other. They break up, montages ... Cyrus comes to a realization (for Molly it's having her cake and eating it too ... not really developing or anything) ... they get back together.

3. What's with the ex?

Oh, did I mention the wedding they were at was the ex wife's wedding? John's ex-wife? She plays the role that would usually be filled by a man. You know, John's adviser, best friend, whatever. Spiritual guru. But, he needed to be more of a loser, so he has no male friends, just his ex-wife. She has a fiancee at the start of the movie, I think she feels sorry for him, which is why she's stuck around him for seven years and continues to advise him after divorce.

The director develops some tension between her fiancee and him, but it never goes anywhere. Just a couple of scenes where the fiancee is visibly annoyed to have his future wife's ex-husband hanging around. I thought at first that maybe the ex-wife was going to get sick of him and reject him (after his breakup with Molly), or him and the new fiancee were going to come to blows or something, but, nothing ever really happens there. It could of made for great character development for John ... oh Cyrus is the main character ...

Another odd point, so ... when John meets Cyrus and Molly, the third time they've been together, he thinks maybe there's something odd. He asks his ex to come check them out, and, pretends to accidentally run into them in the park. Molly, who has fallen quite hard for John and has had sex with him twice, doesn't find their being together running in a park remotely strange. Just, "oh yeah, how are you guys." Did she know they were married at one point, did she understand the situation? She just presumed they were friends? I actually remember thinking during the movie that it was very strange.

Also strange that after he stalks her to her house she doesn't think anything of that either. Or just, shows up there, day three, after he accused her of being with another man .... Did she not use her rear view mirror when she was driving, there were street lights, she would've noticed a car with no headlights on following her the whole way to her house and then stopping on the side of the road.

I mean, I am being nitpicky but I think these types of things just show how badly made this movie is.

4. Editing

Now to blow smoke out my ass about something I really don't know anything about. This appeared to my untrained eye to be all handheld camera work. It was awful to watch. The slow bobble of the handheld camera was just really annoying. The constant zooming in. So many shots, the picture would start with a wider shot, zoom in once to a closer shot, and again to an even closer shoot. It felt very amateur after awhile.

Not all scenes were poorly shot, on the way to the wedding, the scene where John looks at Cyrus through the mirror, that was a well shot scene.

More editing adventures. The voice overs, several conversations were done in the way of voice overs. We'd see a shot of Molly listening, and her voice would be saying something in voice over, and then we'd switch to John not talking while his voice was working in the voice over. It's a nice tactic, but it felt overused by the third time it happened. I mean, it felt effective for when they're relationships developing at the start, like, great, it summarizes this development and brings us into the movie. The second time it happens (more relationship development, when John decides to move in), it's like, oh ... ok ... (of course this is where the movie really screwed up for me ... ).

The third time it happens is between Cyrus and his Mother after the breakup. It seems like copping out at this point, The director could have made for a very REAL, heavily emotive scene, with Cyrus and his Mother arguing and talking over dinner. Instead he creates a fantastical, sentimental, expository scene that, while it does 'develop' the story for us, doesn't really accomplish anything in terms of moving us, or helping us really feel the character development they want happening at this time. It's too disjointed, too distant.

5. The Music ...

When is the indie-, sentimental guitar with some synths music going to die a slow and painful death? I'm ok with it really, it's just that this indie-sentimental music is becoming the entire score of some movies, and it doesn't have any emotional range. It just makes you feel nostalgic and sentimental. It starts to feel really cheap and overused when your entire score consists of that and some source songs. Then again being cheap fits the theme of this movie, considering the editing ...