Catherine Keener portrays a decent, self respecting person this time

Cyrus begins w/ CK in a scene about mismatched, lonely and sexually starved individuals. If ever there was a movie in which you wouldn't want to miss the absolute beginning of, Cyrus is it because CK opens the first scene. The early morning matinee was $13.xx. Ironically, though I wasn't 100% whether I would wait for the DVD, wait for Sunday's matinee, procrastinate until siesta hour, or make my way to the first showing, I managed to arrive at the theatre at exactly the right moment. Cheers! just in time to miss all the trailers and catch the film company logo flash on screen before it FADED TO CK making her way to someone's house. Perfect timing considering my watch has been running slow by two minutes per day.

CK's character in Cyrus has no lines containing profanity, but don't let that stop you from going to this movie. The Duplass brothers exploit her magic with words in a different way, by pairing her up with John C. Reilly. It is what it takes for me to really get a better look at John C Reilly, the man. I mean, what does he have that gets him the job of acting along side CK? All that I can see is the scar on his brow whenever the camera zooms in close for a head shot, and I deduce that the cause of his drooping forehead at the bridge of his nose is the result of a concussion he must've sustained some time ago on that very spot of his brow just above his left eye. Of this I am 99% certain upon hearing the line "Do you know what it's like to be knocked unconscious?" to Cyrus as John sits by his bed side in the middle of the night.

This is not so much a funny ha-ha kind of movie, though it does have its moments. Having caught the first showing at 10:20AM, there weren't many people in the audience to mask my own bursts of laughter. There was, however, somebody snoring during the second act. Because of the lack of people in the theatre, I decide to muffle my laughter. I still have a sense of humor, but lately I've been noticing that only the bottom row of teeth are visible when my lips are ajar, as when I breathe through my mouth. When I see this in the mirror, I can't help but think of a werewolf and the way their bottom row of teeth protruded in the old black and white films of the 60's. I am convince that people with overbites, like Marisa Tomei, have difficulty looking serious because the top row of teeth are exposed when lips crack open giving the impressions of smiling or pleasure. So it goes without saying that, throughout the entire film, I can't take my eyes off of her nice, strong pearly whites. She would make the perfect Mrs. Zombie.

The way this story is structured, I find myself exploring suppositions of scene set-ups wherein I expect resulting threesomes, foursomes, wife swapping and/or love triangles. Maybe even just the simple charity cases sexual compromise, but because this is only rated R, these imaginative ideas quickly disipate. I believe the typecasting of Jonah Hill facilitated this train of thought. Jonah can have a serious side. In a scene in which his character, Cyrus, emulates Alfred Hitchcock, in a vague sorta way, I'm hopeful that somehow, someway this movie may take a turn for that Z for zombie rating by the MPAA. Just imagine, a movie in which teasers contain the lines "Seriously. Don't fuck my mom," parody Hitchcock and include conflicts about weddings, premarital sex, feministic vengefulness, dorky smiley faces in serious situations and psychosomatic memory loss. Here I go, on yet another tangent.

"Al" in ALfred hitchcock is the latin prefix "of" as in aldente, or alcaide (recalling spoof in Fay Grim wherein Fay tracks down her husband, Henry, in Turkey only to be asked by Jallal Said Khan, the figmentation of Osama bin Laden, "How is it you have come to lose your husband?") Fred, in alFRED hitchcock is the first name of TV4's sports reporter, but I sometimes imagine that She of TV4 is really saying friend whenever she verbalizes Fred Rogan's name. Hitch in alfred HITCHcock means marriage in an archaic way. I'll leave the remainder of hysterics to your own imagination. End of rant.

I am not certain whether I am making a transition from being a faithful CK fan to possibly moving toward a John C. Reilly fan, a Jonah Hill fan or a Marisa Tomei fan. Following CK's acting career by watching most of her movies has proven disappointing only because her award nominations become derailed and handed off to her competitors. If I step back and reflect on the story line she chose to be in, I look at it from a screenwriting perspective and realize that the casting calls for goofy expressions, head injuries, angry feminists and child prodigies are irrelevant to the back stories of the characters. John C. Reilly's scar is not a feature pertinent to his character as much as it is just a facial blemish. The sassy nature CK is so famous for compliments John C Reilly because, although she leaves expletives out of her dialog, it's a level of vocabulary one expects a person with a history of a concussion to keep company with as they can both tolerate each other's outbursts of profanity. Marisa's teeth have nothing to do with anything at all other than my own personal fascination, and Jonah's ability to pull off an Alfred Hitchcock impression would only function if my own twisted version of the story outcome was this: Cyrus is truly a gigalo, his mom is just a prostitute, John's the charity case whose ex arranges the whole thing. However, John's ex has an alterior motive; to test whether John thinks with his dick because, truthfully, she really just wants to re-marry him all over again. Ta-da! And they live unhappily ever after. Oh, there might've been a spoiler in there somewhere, so if you didn't understand my explanation of the rated Z for zombie version of this movie, DO NOT read it over again.