The premise is deceptively simple: Momma's Man is about a man, Mikey (Matt Boren), who returns to his childhood home in New York City to visit his parents and finds himself unable to leave. But it would be doing writer/director Azazel Jacobs a grave disservice to suggest that Momma's Man is just another movie about a grown man in a state of arrested adolescence—Mikey's parents are played here by Jacobs' actual parents, and much of the movie takes place in their rambling, cluttered Tribeca loft. The film is as much an homage to the fading colors of their bohemian lifestyle as it is a quiet study of Mikey's decision to temporarily relinquish his adulthood.

Mikey is clearly a worm for leaving his wife and baby with no explanation, and there's something very unattractive about a grown man crawling home to sit in Mommy's lap, but it's to Jacobs' credit that there's more to Mikey than weakness. Mikey's clinginess stems in part from the painful realization of his parents' mortality, which he handles by retreating to a place where his parents are once again his caretakers. It's a quiet film, and near perfect in its exploration of the complicated shifts and struggles inherent to the parent/child relationship.