Momma’s Man

Momma’s Man chronicles the increasingly anxious dilemma of Mikey (Matt Boren), a young husband and father who stops off at his parents' loft during a business trip to New York and finds himself emotionally unable to leave. Unsure of his own motivations, he makes up excuses about why he’s staying – his flight is delayed; his flight is canceled – but while his doting mother (Flo Jacobs, the director’s mother) is more than happy to enable his procrastination, his father (Azazel’s father, venerable avant-garde filmmaker Ken Jacobs) grows suspicious of his son’s change of plans. Ignoring their concern, Mikey moves back into his old room. He immerses himself in childhood memorabilia, dodges his wife’s panicked voicemail, and even attempts to reconect with old neighborhood buddies (at least one as hair-raisingly adrift as he). And as the days go on, Mikey becomes more and more entrenched in his adolescent sanctuary. But as his life builds to a darkly comic pitch reminiscent of Jacobs’ fellow ‘downtown’ auteur Jim Jarmusch, this young father realizes that he must choose between life as it is and life as it was. A tribute to Jacobs’ parents and their work as much as to the (lost) New York of his childhood, Momma's Man is an acutely perceptive, deeply personal take on a universal experience: the fear of growing up.

"[A] wryly comic, sometimes heartbreaking and altogether original film." (Scott Foundas, Variety)

"Cluttered with beautiful junk and crammed to the rafters with feeling, 'Momma's Man' is a touchingly true film,
part weepie, part comedy, about the agonies of navigating that slippery slope called adulthood.”
— Manohla Dargis, The New York Times (review 8/22)

FIVE OUT OF SIX STARS; “Azazel Jacobs’s lo-fi gem...could be seen as a downtown-deadpan answer film to [Judd] Apatow’s blockbuster beta-male celebrations. A moody, pitch-perfect ode to immaturity.”
— David Fear, Time Out New York

“An extraordinary movie in every way.”
— Peter Travers, Rolling Stone

“One of the sweetest, saddest stories Franz Kafka never wrote. From the movie's first shot...'Momma's Man' radiates unconditional affection.”
— J. Hoberman, The Village Voice

“Deceptively simple, marvelously filmed and profoundly affecting...a film of acute perceptions, great sadness and wordless, ecstatic joy.”
— Andrew O’Hehir, Salon

“A beautiful, wise, shaggy, poker-faced comedy of discombobulation that does nothing less than re-invent — and purify — that Sundance staple, the quirky, angst-ridden family drama.”
— Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly



Official Selection
2008 Sundance Film Festival
2008 Rotterdam Film Festival