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A somewhat promising road-trip comedy "Jeffie Was Here" ultimately falls a little short of its goals.
Alan (Peter Bedgood) and Amanda (Alexis Raben) are broke. They live in a ramshackle apartment while Alan, a college professor, finishes his first novel, and making things worse Alan had a little tryst with his teaching assistant that one of his students may have witnessed.
When they learn Alan's grandmother has passed away, they have to trek cross-country for her funeral. With no money, and too proud to beg for help from his parents, they instead take out a ride-share ad online.
They get Jeffie (Todd Edwards, who also wrote and directed) a portly, bald, obnoxious 30-something with a scraggly beard and a wheelchair who seems friendly enough but has a host of issues that slowly erode Roger and Amanda's sanity.
You could call it "Little Miss Sunshine" by way of "What About Bob?".
I found Alan and Amanda's arc to be engaging and interesting. Alan's "affair" borderlined on rape (his TA virtually forced herself on him), but Amanda, a waitress, flirts with a customer (Ken Marino) and seems to be headed toward infidelity herself. This potentially interesting arc is more or less dropped, though, once the road trip starts.
The weak link was Jeffie, who in a more realistic setting and as a more fully-realized character could have been likable AND annoying. Here he's just annoying, from his efforts at getting wheelchair pity to his judgmental attitude to the outlandish and overly elaborate things he does that people only seem to do in movies, because in real life they'd get punched, arrested, or both.
The best thing about "Jeffie" early on was its subtlety, but once the title character arrives it all goes out the window. Jeffie is supposed to be a manifestation of the issues between the couple, but seems to actually be just some random strange guy who has something on one of them.
"Jeffie" isn't a bad movie, and in spots is very watchable. It's just not quite what it could have been.