Daily Plastic: Momma's Man

Movie	Our Take	Other Takes
Momma's Man Trailer . IMDB	After a summer full of movies that celebrate the arrested development of their male characters, that titter and wink while grown men behave like teenagers, Momma's Man is a welcome palette cleanser. Robert Davis Paste Magazine	Momma's Man, directed by Azazel Jacobs from his own screenplay, is one of the sweetest, saddest stories Franz Kafka never wrote. J. Hoberman Village Voice Disclosure: Although my most vivid memories of Aza Jacobs are as the unnamed infant installed in a crib in a Johnson City apartment and called, for what seemed like a very long time, "Mr. Baby," I've known his parents for nearly 40 years, going back to my undergraduate days at the State University of Binghamton, where Ken Jacobs impressed me as possibly the most brilliant film teacher in the world. J. Hoberman Village Voice Thomas Wolfe's immortal words about the impossibility of homecomings loom large over Momma's Man, writer-director Azazel Jacobs' wryly comic, sometimes heartbreaking and altogether original film... Scott Foundas Variety Good Lord! Didn't Randy know you can't go home again? Thomas Wolfe You Can't Go Home Again If nothing else, Jacobs has the set of a lifetime in his folks' cluttered apartment, a cavernous space subdivided into a labyrinth of shelves, mirrors, and tchotchkes. Depending on where Jacobs places the camera, the apartment looks like an entirely different place. Noel Murray Onion AV Club [B]uried beneath the poignant clutter of this occasionally familiar stunted-youth-in-life-transition tale is a surprisingly complex, elegantly detailed meditation on creativity and artistic growth. Michael Koresky Reverse Shot There may be an autobiographical slant to this dynamic, but to harp on the similarities between the man calling the shots behind the camera and the melancholic trying to break free in front of it would miss the point. Like any artist, Mr. Jacobs has shaken down life for what it can give him. That life includes his parents, who belong to a generation of Manhattan artists who have become as exotic as the last of the Mohicans. Manohla Dargis New York Times

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