Diane Keaton. Jeff Daniels. Jon Heder. Anna Faris. That's a lot of star power for a movie to go straight to video. Hell, it even has Eli Wallach in it!

Start watching Mama's Boy and you still won't understand. Yes, the premise is tired -- kid won't leave home even at 29; mom meets a new guy who moves in and wreaks havoc on kid's cushy lifestyle -- and even though we already had a Grandma's Boy a year earlier, Mama's Boy starts out funny enough to merit a few chuckles and hands off the fast-forward button.

Thanks Keaton for that. She plays good ol' mom with such gusto that you can forgive similar roles in the upteen other movies she's played this character in in the '00s. She plays it straight to Heder's naturally spastic Jeffrey ("Have you forgotten something? It comes in a brown paper bag and rhymes with my lunch!") and the over-the-top smarmy Mert (Daniels), a motivational speaker who quickly takes up with mom and begins a Cold War with the lad: Mert burns Jeffrey's comic books. Jeffrey gets Mert a subscription to Frotteurism Today. It won't knock you off the couch, but it's good for a laugh.

Things sadly come to a grinding halt, though, when the schtick wears thin and starts to repeat itself. Before the one-hour mark, we've been subjected to so much of Jeffrey's whining and scheming that we realize he's done nothing good for anyone else in the entire film. It's a miracle that mom hasn't kicked him out years ago, but poor Nora (Faris) gets the worst of it: As the "girlfriend" it's baffling that she agrees to Jeffrey's demand to be driven to Arizona as Jeffrey attempts yet another scheme to destroy Mert's life. By this time we're left hoping Mama's Boy will shock us with a killer plot twist: Maybe Nora murders Jeffrey while he sleeps in the car, then gets adopted by the happy older couple.

Sorry to get your hopes up.

The DVD includes a commentary track and additional scenes.



I like your sleeves.