The Puffy Chair
Dir: Jay Duplass, Mark Duplass
2005
**
The mid 2000's was awash with these 'real life' American indie drama/comedies and most of them annoyed me immensely. The Duplass Brothers' The Puffy Chair was one of them. The premise was fine, indeed, not all your dreams come true and reality can hit quite hard sometimes but the Duplass attempt at exploring this, with a 'Fuffy chair' being a central prop, does not make it any better or tell us anything we don't already know or help in any kind of way. Exploration of the painfully obvious and dreadfully dull (and I like miserable films), watch only if you have all the time in the world at your disposal.

This is John
Dir: Jay Duplass
2003
***
This is John, their second short film, is a very simple experiment from the Duplass brothers. It is a good starting point of reference for big fans of the two film makers as it is the beginning of a constant theme in their movies; that of confidence (or lack of) in young middle-class white men.

Scrapple
Dir: Jay Duplass, Mark Duplass
2004
**
The battle of sexes continues in this Duplass Brothers short, but never has it been so annoying to watch. Not my kind of humour, I found it frustrating and irritating, two things that seem to have crept into mainstream comedy these days but I'm not too sure why or how. The Brothers Duplass are hit and miss at the best of times, this is an example of one of their misses.

The Intervention
Dir: Jay Duplass
2005
**
I'm sure The Dupless Brother's short film 'The Intervention' looked good on paper but having been to film school I have to say I've seen this type of film hundreds of times. Neither of those times did I enjoy it either. Although the casual way it is filmed lends itself well to the feel of the film, a more classical fixed frame would have made it even more painful. It's nothing special and I'm surprised it won awards at film festivals, I can only imagine it was a slow year.

Cyrus
Dir: Jay Duplass, Mark Duplass
2010
****
Cyrus's post-production is totally misleading. I'm guessing many people were disappointed that instead of getting a low-brow dumb comedy they actually got something tender and quite lovely. It's more drama than comedy, it's that cringe factor that confuses the mind that it is something funny when really it's just uncomfortably odd. Not laugh out loud funny just an oddity one can enjoy or not as the case may be. I found it to be a very pleasant surprise, as I was expecting a stupid Step-Brothers type comedy, with very few laughs. I may not have got the laughs but I thought it was brilliant writing. How a film can have a grown up man boy as the central character and still be really romantic is down to the good script and good performances.