Review by gloria wong.

Our story begins when Mikey, a thirty-something married man ostensibly on a business trip to his hometown of New York, half-explains to his elderly parents that his flight home was overbooked - he’d most likely return to his wife and infant daughter in Los Angeles the next morning. Only he doesn’t. He stays, and he appears to be totally disinterested in returning to his adult life for an alarming number of days. He slips easily into his childhood bedroom as well as his childhood habits – play guitar, reading comics and letting his mother care for him.

As one may well imagine, the film has many inspired comic moments, mostly featuring Mikey’s interactions with his increasingly concerned parents. What consistently surprises throughout the film is Jacob’s delicate take on Mikey which keeps the character from becoming irretrievably pathetic – a man-child cartoon character.

Jacobs is the son of legendary experimental filmmaker Ken Jacobs and visual artist Flo Jacobs. Read into the decision what you will, but his casting of his artist parents as protagonist’s artist parents in this film is genius. Gorgeously shot in the Jacobs’ actual family home in New York (a loft crammed to the rafters with stuff, junk, art and doo-dads), Momma’s Man is an oddly touching, often funny, perfectly scaled family drama.

Momma's Man
Azazel Jacobs | USA | 2008 | 94min