Momma’s Man — a film-festival favorite by writer-director Azazel Jacobs — takes a twee conceit and spins it into a poignant, funny look at what it’s like trying to grow up (finally!) in one’s thirties. (It’s out on DVD next week.)
Mikey (Matt Boren) is on his way home to Los Angeles, where his wife and newborn child await him. Bumped from his flight, he returns to his parents’ crowded Manhattan loft. Once there, he can’t quite bring himself to leave. Most of the film takes place in that apartment, a fantastically eccentric nook-and-cranny-filled space that’s captured on grainy 35mm film. Jacobs cast his own parents — filmmaker Ken and artist Flo Jacobs, in their own, real apartment — as Mikey’s increasingly worried parents, and the choice may account for the film’s tenderness. It’s a modest, minor-key masterpiece.
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