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As a film fan, I’m always refreshed and inspired when I get to see great actors commiting themselves to a worthy project, and watching their partnership with directors who understand instinctively what they want to achieve. Granted, it doesn’t happen as often as I’d like, but I’ve got good news to report this time. The new dark comedy Cyrus is such a movie. Taking John C. Reilly and Marisa Tomei and giving them a middle-aged movie romance that’s worth ten or twelve dopey Hollywood rom-coms, the Duplass brothers throw in an unexpected surprise; a strong, intelligent performance by Jonah Hill as Tomei’s creepy, emotionally stunted 21 yr old son who’s dead set against ever calling Reilly ‘dad’.

There are an untold number of independent films chronicling the sometimes rocky road that comes with the territory of unconventional family pairings. There’s nothing terribly unconventional about seeing Reilly’s John or Tomei’s Molly come together as two people seeking out love later in life, nor in forming a family unit with Tomei’s grown son, Cyrus. What’s strange here is the less than wholesome emphasis and focus that Cyrus seems to put on his relationship with his mother. It isn’t an incestuous one, but it is a one that encompasses an unwelcome and unsavory physical and emotional intimacy that is inappropriate for a guy of Cyrus’ age. His mother is his world, and his confidant, and his best friend. He has scarcely even considered that human interaction exists beyond his connection with her.

With such a sturdy and long psychological umbilical tethering the two of them, Cyrus and Molly are both suffering, although neither is aware of it. When Molly meets the hapless and goofy John, a lonely divorcee, he threatens to sever this umbilical and it sends Cyrus into an emotional tailspin. It isn’t long before he’s challenging Reilly to an Oedpial confrontation with Molly as the prize.

This could go wrong in all sorts of ways, and yet Cyrus isn’t just a funny movie, it’s also a suprisingly warm-hearted and engrossing drama that never seems as sour as we expect it to be. Part of this is on the part of the Duplasses themselves, who have decided beforehand exactly what kind of movie and tone they are going for and stick the landing by casting all the right actors and structuring the movie so that each character has a segment where they are allowed to blossom and shine. This is essentially a three character drama, and each one is saved from being typecast as a generic placeholder, i.e. hero, villain, damsel in distress. All three of them are flawed, all three have been broken in some way, and all three have some legitimate claims to the things they want. The challenge that lies at the heart of Cyrus is whether or not they came come together and make a better future without sacrificing everything to do so.

Give it up for John C. Reilly, because his John is one of the best characters he’s ever done; it’s a perfect balance of the sensible everyman Reilly played early in his career and the kind of eccentric nutballs he portrays in films that usually costar Will Ferrell. John has his moments of insanity including a terrifically funny drunken karaoke scene where he serenades Molly with ‘Don’t you want me Baby!’ or the scene where he quietly and clearly states to Cyrus that he will destroy him if he continues to meddle in his relationship. But in the midst of those mishaps, Reilly makes John a likable and sympathetic guy. He’s had a hard time of dealing with his divorce from Jamie (Catherine Keener), who is still his friend, and being thrust back into the dating scene because she’s getting married and feels sorry for him is also difficult. When he meets Molly and she gives him honest and warm affection, he’s not one to balk at it, and he starts trying again. When he meets Cyrus, he does what he can to give both he and Molly what they need, but he doesn’t anticipate Cyrus’ contempt and desire to dispatch him. When he finds himself being rejected again, by Molly’s son no less, his defense mechanisms kick.

Marisa Tomei is possibly the only actress I can think of that could pull off the role of Molly, because we have to believe that this woman is both an intelligent and put together gal and still capable of holding her twentysomething son in an accidental thrall of which she isn’t aware. Tomei can do this because of her latent warmth and nurturing presence. She’s a great foil for Reilly,and the two have a really cute chemistry together that makes the early chapters worth cheering for. When Cyrus shows up, she makes us believe that Molly is an enabler for Cyurs, but a well meaning one that has been doing so much to protect her son that somewhere she forgot to take inventory of whether or not the job was done.  She’s never less than endearing and she’s the solid, sympathetic center of the film; it’s not surprising to see why John and Cyrus would be competing for her attentions, regardless of what form they take,

The surprise for me was Jonah Hill. He’s struck me in the past as a surprisngly one note character, playing a rendition of that drunken fratboy theme that guys like John Belushi specialized in years ago. Here, he’s got to do a lot more than that, and he has a tricky character. The suspense of the film is based on not knowing exactly what the unpredictable Cyrus is going to do, but at the same time, this is a comedy drama not a horror movie, and Cyrus can’t be such a sinister wildcard that he scuttles all of the other subtle work going on. To Hill’s credit he manages to avoid making the kid a villain, or a one-note mama’s boy.

There’s a certain sense of sadness to Cyrus, and we see that he honestly and genuinely loves his mother. He has no specific beef against John either, other than the obvious one; he threatens to take his mother away from him. Watching Hill explore the ways in which Cyrus is both scary intelligent and emotionally stupid is like watching an actor really take inventory of his craft for the first time. I hope to see Jonah in more intelligent fare like this and less scataological explorations of Judd Apataow’s headspace.

For everyone who’s been a bit burned out with the lack of substance in this season’s big entries, here comes Cyrus. It isn’t a deep or dramatically sweeping film, but it tells us an odd, believable story in a delicate and wise tone, with actors who make it all come alive. That’s as close as we’ve come to a knockout in several weeks.