Living away from parents, having a job, a wife, and children are ingredients that suggest maturity but do not guarantee it. Mikey (Matt Boren), a recently married man in his thirties, comes from California to visit his parents in New York and falls into a psychological paralysis that keeps him from accepting the reality of his adult life. Shot in the actual loft on Chambers Street in which he grew up, native New York director Azazel Jacobs' extraordinary Momma's Man zeroes in on our inability to let go, complete the past, and move on. While his wife Laura (Dana Varon) and their infant daughter wait for him in California, Mikey returns from the airport to his parent's home, invents a story that the flight was canceled because of mechanical problems, and stays and stays. Ignoring his wife's urgent phone messages, he convinces himself that it is okay to stay for a while.
Jacobs, the son of experimental film director Ken Jacobs, has created a character in Mikey who has obvious problems yet whose sweetness reaches out to us even if we do not fully understand the source of his aberration or even believe that he could really be the son of two very intellectual artists, Ken and Flo (played by Jacobs' real parents). Settling into the claustrophobic yet oddly comforting environment of his childhood loft filled with gadgets, trinkets, paintings, and sculptures, he rummages through old letters, comic books, toys and the paraphernalia of his childhood, contacts an old high school girl friend to apologize for something the girl has completely forgotten about, visits a friend to watch old boxing videos, and takes up his guitar to sing a lame high-school song while mom and dad are trying to sleep.
Though mom and dad sense that something is wrong and ask him repeatedly what's going on, he tells them that he is fine, refusing to confront his demons. When pressed about his relationship, he makes up an affair for his wife as the reason he needs time away from her. Soon he is physically unable to leave the apartment and walk down the stairs to the street even though he fortifies himself with half a bottle of wine. Though his parents are caring, there is no truth telling and no sense of urgency. His mother offers him cereal with fruit and tells him that he can stay as long as he wants but seems unable to grasp the fact that he is sinking into a black hole.
Momma's Man is not just a film about pathology, however, but about universal human longing that has enough touches of humor that some have even called it a comedy. Whatever the genre you ascribe it to, it is a film of rare honesty and naturalness that hits us where it hurts. What makes it so unsettling is that Jacobs has reached a part of us that yearns to relive the warm comforts of childhood when all we had to do to feel self worth was to crawl into our mother's lap and close our eyes. Unlike Mikey, however, most of us can open our eyes, walk down the stairs and out the front door without looking back.
