Movie Review: Jeff, Who Lives at Home | Movies & TV | Arts ...

Discovering One?s Destiny Through Nonaction

By Mark Jackson
Epoch Times Staff Created: March 17, 2012 Last Updated: March 17, 2012

Susan Sarandon in the comedy ?Jeff, Who Lives at Home,? a film about a man who might find his destiny. (Hilary Bronwyn Gayle/ Paramount Pictures)

?What?s my destiny?? is a question generally pondered in one?s youth. Buddhism calls it Right Livelihood. It used to be the case that one worked hard supporting oneself with a job one didn?t like, in order to find a job one did. In the modern ?accordion family? with its ?boomerang kids,? the kids often return home and ponder their destiny from the basement couch.

The titular Jeff of ?Jeff, Who Lives at Home? (Jason Segel) is a 30-year-old uber-slacker who ponders his destiny on a regular basis. He can?t hold a job due to the fact that he obsessively views every random occurrence in his life as a sign ultimately meant to reveal a unifying meaning.

?Jeff, Who Lives at Home? (Hilary Bronwyn Gayle/ Paramount Pictures)

Jeff?s a curious young man who rows his boat gently down the stream?an attitude toward life known in Chinese as ?wuwei,? or nonaction. The thing of it is, wuwei as a concept isn?t boring per se. ?Jeff, Who Lives at Home? is full of examples of wuwei in action, but misses the boat on being entertaining for about seven-eighths of the movie.

Nagged by his fed-up mom (Susan Sarandon) to pick up some wood glue from the store, he gets ready to leave the house. But first he gets a wrong-number phone call from someone asking for Kevin.

It?s very mysterious. What could it mean? He must look into it. He sees a Kevin on the bus. It has to be a sign. He must now follow this Kevin. He follows Kevin into a bad neighborhood, gets into a pickup basketball game, and winds up getting punched and mugged by Kevin. This was clearly not the true meaning of the sign of Kevin.

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But, not to worry?later he sees a ?Kevin Kandy? truck. He runs after it and jumps on the back of it. Go with the flow. You get the idea.

The second storyline is about Jeff?s brother (Ed Helms), a blowhard cad who buys a Porsche without asking his wife?s permission, immediately wraps it around a tree while showing off, and then wonders later why he discovers his wife sneaking into a motel with a male office colleague.

Their mom also has her own separate storyline, which is equally vacuous?vacuous because this is supposed to be a comedy.

What a mess. But out of the chaos emerges order, and Jeff?s belief in a cosmic order is borne out in the end. We are rewarded with an insight into the method in the madness.

The acting is fine?this is, after all, Susan Sarandon we?re talking about here, but the humor is thin and predictable, and there?s little tension in the scenes of Jeff?s meandering misadventures in nonaction.

?Jeff? is much like the recent film ?Thin Ice,? which drones on in low tension for the majority of the film, only to reach a too-little-too-late dramatic payoff toward the end.

Then again, wuwei is an interesting concept, and the idea of pursuing it to such an extreme is an interesting take on life. Perhaps one could view the film for its lesson, and go in with lowered entertainment expectations.

One could also order a copy of Lao Tzu?s book ?Tao Te Ching.? It?s a fairly quick read. It will explain wuwei without taking you on a low-energy journey through the seedy side of of suburbia.

Director: Mark Duplass, Jay Duplass
Cast: Jason Segel, Ed Helms, Judy Greer, Rae Dawn Chong, Susan Sarandon
Running Time: 83 minutes
Rating: R

Source: http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/arts-entertainment/movie-review-jeff-who-lives-at-home-206710.html

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