Jeff Who Lives at Home – Blu-ray Disc Review
June 19, 2012 – 5:51 am - Posted by: Justin SlussTags: Blu-ray, Ed Helms, Jason Segel, Jay Duplass, Judy Greer, Mark Duplass, Paramount Home Entertainment, Rae Dawn Chong, Susan Sarandon, The Duplass Brothers, UltraViolet
has an average rating of 6.8 on IMDb
1080p in AVC MPEG-4 on a 25gb disc
DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio
only includes UltraViolet digital copy
– 
– 2012
– 82 minutes
– Paramount
– 
This uses 21.2GB for the movie out of 22.0GB total.
Overall Verdict – Great Film & Quality / No Bonus
Buy it on Blu-ray for $20.95 @ Amazon.com
— Review written by: Justin Sluss —
The Movie Itself was written and directed by The Duplass Brothers (Jay Duplass & Mark Duplass) whose previous films include “Cyrus” from 2010, “Baghead” from 2008, “The Puffy Chair” from 2005 and their most recent, after this, “The Do-Deca-Pentathlon” set to be released in a limited theatrical run in July of this year (2012). It’s also worth noting that the film was produced by Jason Reitman, responsible for directing such memorable films as “Thank You For Smoking” (2005), “Juno” (2007), “Up in the Air” (2009) and “Young Adult” (2011).
The story to this film revolves around a slacker (pothead) named “Jeff” (played by Jason Segel) in his thirties that (as the title suggests) still lives at home with his mother. Jeff is a very unique guy and is an outspoken believer in things happening for a reason and also, as we learn in the opening of the film, is a fan of the film “Signs” which seems to be a metaphor to him. Thanks to the studio providing me with a link to a clip from the film that has his discussing this I’ll be able to let him tell you a bit more before I continue onward.
Some things you should know about Jeff is that his father has passed away, as a result his mother is a widow and works at a desk job in a cubicle, while his brother lives with his wife and works at a paint store. The three members of this family have seemed to lose touch with one another, especially between Jeff and his brother.
One day while Jeff is sitting in his mom’s basement smoking a bong and watching an infomercial he gets a phone call. The guy on the other end asks if “Kevin” is there to which Jeff responds by telling him his name and that no one named Kevin lives there. Anybody else would have just wrote this off as a wrong number but Jeff is deep in thought as a person and thinks there’s more of a meaning to it. This leads to him ignoring his mother whom he lives with when she requests he go purchase some wood glue to fix a wooden cabinet door. In fairness he does take the money she left out for him and leaves at first to go get the wood glue but he soon gets distracted when he’s riding a public bus and sees a guy get on with the name “Kevin” on the back of his basketball jersey. Jeff starts to watch the guy and when he gets off at his stop Jeff follows him. He finds out this isn’t the Kevin he’s looking for but manages to play a game of basketball with the guy and explain why he was following him. The guy obviously thinks he may be a bit nuts — just as most of the audience may believe themselves at this point of the film.
Meanwhile Jeff’s brother “Pat” (played by Ed Helms) is having some marital issues at home with his wife “Linda” (played by Judy Greer) over his decision to purchase a Porsche. This is just the beginning of his problems but to tell you more on that I would consider to be “spoilers” of sorts. Let’s just say his life has its problems as well. He lives in a small apartment and works at a paint store. Not exactly the type of person who could afford a luxury sports car, as his wife tried to tell him. Jeff’s mother “Sharon” (played by Susan Sarandon) works a desk job as I mentioned earlier. She’s not happy, after all her husband has passed away and naturally she feels lonely. The very same day all this is going on with Jeff and his brother she manages to get a surprise at work when a paper airplane lands on her desk. When she opens up the paper airplane she finds a hand drawn flower. This leaves her a bit freaked out and confused until she gets an anonymous instant message from someone claiming they work with her and are a secret admirer. She tells her co-worker “Carol” (played by Rae Dawn Chong) about this and the two speculate as to who the secret admirer is.
Back to Jeff. Eventually on his quest to find the Kevin he’s looking for Jeff manages to cross paths with his brother Pat. The two try their best to tolerate one another. Pat makes fun of his brother Jeff when he tells him what he’s out doing instead of going to get wood glue as he was instructed to. The two end up spending the entire day together for the most part but to avoid “spoilers” I won’t discuss what makes them decide to tolerate one another’s company.
“Jeff Who Lives at Home” technically is a comedy but it has some serious dramatic elements at times. The characters here have their problems and are far from perfect or totally happy. You have two brothers and a widowed mother who all three are seeking some meaning to their lives. This has some heartfelt moments as I said when referring to drama but there’s also some hilarious comedy along the way. Most of the best comedy comes early on in the film via lines of dialogue from the main character Jeff. Lines of dialogue like “Yoda would be killer in a business meeting” and “I was meant to have a business meeting with the Kevins” are two of my favorites. Jeff’s search for the Kevin is something that may seem absurd at first but it all comes together and has its own bit of meaning to it. Everything happens for a reason and has a purpose to lead us to our destiny just as he believes. This film is way more than your typical comedy. I give it a nice recommendation to anyone who believes that statement.
The film did really well with both critics and moviegoers alike. It has a very good 78% (out of 100%) rating on the “tomatometer” and is “Certified Fresh” over at Rotten Tomatoes. In terms of box office numbers it didn’t quite do as well as I’m sure the studio (Paramount) would have liked for it to do considering it had reportedly a 10 million dollar budget. It only ended up grossing a total of roughly 4.2 million dollars in worldwide box office ticket sales — according to Box Office Mojo. However, now that it’s making its way to home video I think that critical acclaim as well as word of mouth is going to lead to it finding its target audience and making back some money for the studio.
Video Quality on this release is in full 1080p using the AVC MPEG-4 codec on a BD-25 (25 gigabyte single layer Blu-ray Disc) in the 1.78:1 aspect ratio. According to technical specifications on IMDb this was shot digitally in 4.5K resolution using the Red One MX camera. There’s an absolutely pristine quality to the picture here with tons, I mean tons of detail in every single shot in the film. There’s an especially impressive amount of detail here in close-ups which you’ll see in the screenshots I’ve done. Also worth noting this has a unique style of handy cam type cinematography that almost resembles how the U.S. version of the TV show “The Office” is done with these very cool zoom-ins at certain moments to add emphasis on facial expressions and whatnot during key scenes. The black level here is perfectly solid, the flesh tones are accurate and the color palette is vibrant although just a tiny, tiny bit subdued to set a tad unique visual style. The work here by the DP (director of photography) Jas Shelton is done complete and utter justice in the Hi-Def presentation found on this Blu-ray Disc. No flaws at all here in the Hi-Def and this earns itself a perfect “5 Star Rating” for overall video quality.
Audio Quality on this release is presented in DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio. The film starts up with opening dialogue from the character “Jeff” (played by Jason Segel) dictating his thoughts about a certain film into a tape recorder. His dialogue here is delivered very distinctly through the center channel speaker and makes for every bit of the sound during this opening scene. Once the opening credits start up you’ll be treated to the very beautiful music composed by Michael Andrews whose previous credits include one of my favorite films “Donnie Darko” as well as one of the Duplass brothers other film’s “Cyrus” from 2010. Safe to say the composer is somewhat now familiar to working with their material and that I personally consider him very talented. Just look at his credits on IMDb and you’ll likely agree once you see what films he’s done the original scores for. Andrews’ original music here gets delivered through the 5.1 mix with an amazing amount of front channel presence as well as excellent rear channel and LFE (bass) presence. The original score here is done complete justice.
Other stuff like dialogue, as mentioned is delivered distinctly and never requires volume adjustments nor gets “drowned out” by the music. The sound effects here sound very realistic and really get the job done. Speaking of sound effects, the incident involving a Porsche holds a decent amount of intensity to it. The songs on the soundtrack here also sound great; namely the song “Looking for A Sign” by Beck which seems very fitting to the main character. All and all, this 5.1 lossless mix isn’t anything that will “blow you away” but it does certainly have its moments, much thanks to Michael Andrews’ original music that makes up the score. That being said, this earns a very solid “4 Star Rating” for overall audio quality which is pretty impressive considering this film first and foremost is after all a comedy driven primarily by dialogue.
Bonus Materials on this release are not present. However an UltraViolet streaming digital copy of the film is included via a paper insert with a URL and code to redeem it online.
Overall the bonus materials here are basically nil but you do get an UltraViolet digital copy of the film included, which is nice but doesn’t make up for the lack of supplemental material.
As I said, there aren’t any bonus materials on the release itself but Paramount has released a short Featurette online via YouTube which you’ll find embedded below.
Blu-ray Disc packaging:
Screenshots:
NOTE: The full-sized 1920×1080 files are in a .PNG file format and uncompressed. Please be patient with the slow loading times, keep in mind these files are at least 1MB (1 megabyte) in size each.
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