"Cyrus" feels like a rough draft of a big budget comedy film. And, in Hollywood, that's almost a good thing since the journey from draft to finished product is often where movies get screwed up. The film follows a lost soul who falls for a beautiful woman with a troubling relationship with her almost-incestuous 22 year old son. The problem with the film is that it's stuck in between an off-the-wall comedy and a poignant relationship story. The characters and situations are so out there that whenever the movie tries to go for an even borderline heartfelt moment, you don't buy it.

There's also the issue of casting. John C. Reilly plays the leading man and comes off as a loser. It's like his character from Step Brothers matured to be a more adjusted man. Everything he does comes off as manic or neurotic. Even things that aren't crazy, like wanting someone to meet his girlfriend and her kid to see if he isn't the only one who thinks something is weird between them, comes off as insane. And there's really nothing gained from this insanity. The weird antics just make him harder to connect with and the film would have been better off if he was just a normal schlub. (Not to say that he should be perfectly adjusted but give him normal problems rather than making him seem like a complete outcast.

But why would an even halfway normal guy get involved in such a strange relationship? Well, the woman is absolutely radiant Marissa Tomei. (And for such a weirdo, Reilly's character gets picked up by Tomei and was once married to a character played by Catherine Keener.) Now just having a guy like Reilly land a girl like Tomei is one thing but to give Reilly as many issues as her is a bit too much.

Now, thankfully, when the battle for Tomei's affections between Reilly's character and her son, played by Jonah Hill, starts up, it never really goes too far. In the hands of a studio and a hack director, this film could have devolved into a Dane Cook/Kate Hudson straight-to-DVD product. The Duplass Brothers wisely focused more on the emotions than the hijinks but the set-up and characters just weren't strong enough. Also, things do get weird and those moments, while funny, make the film seem unreal, which then hurts the film when it tries to get anywhere close to real emotions. Then again, if a studio went in the other direction and tried to really set the emotions in a real foundation, I could see this becoming an Eric Bana/Heather Graham flick that should have immediately gone to Oxygen/Lifetime.

In the end, the film stuck to the middle which helped it from ever being boring and kept it going at a nice pace but it never really reached a peak in either the emotions or humor. The film never felt completely unreal but very few of the moments seemed like something that would happen in real life. It kind of felt like the first feature from someone who just graduated from film school. Not polished but headed in the right direction. I'd recommend checking it out on DVD but if you're going to the theater, there are other films out there that I think are more entertaining.

Here's the trailer, which wisely plays John as a more normal person.