'Momma's Man': A comment on the stresses of modern life

By Kevin Thomas | Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

October 9, 2008

At once poignant and ruefully amusing, director Azazel Jacobs' third feature, Momma's Man, finds Mikey (Matt Boren) visiting his parents (Flo and Ken Jacobs) while on a business trip to New York City, only to discover that he can't leave.

It's a key strength of this subtle, beguiling film that Mikey hasn't been living a seemingly dysfunctional life in California, where he has a lovely wife (Dana Varon) and baby daughter, a pleasant apartment and a decent job. The film is a comment on the stresses of fast-changing modern life, with its sense of loss and dislocation that make the security of Mikey's parents' bohemian artists' loft, his beautiful, nurturing mother's tender attentions and his childhood mementos so irresistible a security blanket for Mikey; he keeps postponing his return to California and soon discovers that he can't even step outside his parents' apartment.

Jacobs wrote the role of Mikey especially for Boren, who, as a paunchy, unhandsome guy in his 30s, fearlessly allows Mikey to seem at times an outsized baby. But Boren shows us that Mikey is much more than that, and the filmmaker's actual parents, Flo Jacobs, a painter, and Ken Jacobs, an avant-garde filmmaker, emerge as an attractive couple of much sensitivity and intelligence, handling their son's sudden midlife crisis with concern and restraint.

Mastery of tone is everything here. Azazel's control, combined with his wit, perception, discretion and easy command of the visual and of his cast, makes Momma's Man a gem.