Although we’ve seen some of the key comedic scenes multiple times in commercials and trailers –Charlize shopping for a hot outfit, Charlize talking about her baggage–watching “Young Adult” felt fresh and new.
Full disclosure: Charlize Theron is a huge favorite of ours, as an actress, as a person and as one of the most beautiful women to currently grace the silver screen.
By all accounts, her character, young adult author and Minneapolis (or Mini-Apple, as small town Minnesotans apparently call it) resident Mavis Gary, was supposed to be “vile,” a word that is rarely used but brings to mind horrendous qualities about a person.
But is it really so terrible that she apparently has trouble meeting deadlines, loses herself in casual sex, drinks from a huge bottle of Diet Coke as a hangover cure first thing in the morning or pulls her hair to relieve stress? C’mon people, Mavis is not that out there, especially when she settles in with a bucket of KFC to watch the latest ep of “Keeping Up With the Kardashians” or tries to remember to feed her pocketbook-sized Pomeranian.
You could possibly say she’s a bit deluded, but nothing completely off the charts–until she decides to trek back to her small Minnesota town and win back the heart of her high school boyfriend, a married hottie (played by Patrick Wilson) who just had a baby girl.
OK, this is a pretty common scenario—in your dreams, though. Who hasn’t wanted to go back to high school and re-live young romance, especially if you were hooked up with the cute star player on the baseball team who was also the lead singer/guitarist of a band who played around town—or the equivalent?
What makes Mavis’ fictional story so interesting and relatable—through Cody’s sharp script and Reitman’s direction—is the filmmakers’ refusal to let her off the hook for her foibles, or to grant her any sort of redemption in the third act.
Sure, some of the scenes are painful to watch, like the meltdown at a family party, which we won’t spoil, or when we realize she was never going to call her parents who live in the small town, which is continually bashed as a hick haven whose haute cuisine is the newest location of a combo Taco Bell, Pizza Hut and KFC.
More humor comes in her overindulgence in Makers Mark at the local bars, of which there appear to be two. One dive, one not so dive—where she originally makes her play for Wilson, who has agreed to meet her for old time’s sake.
Mavis’ fantasy of stealing him away from his salt of the earth wife—who’s also a drummer in an all-new-mom garage band—takes over her reality, and we’re in for the duration, a surprisingly short and snappy hour and a half.
And what heroine, drunk, disheveled or at her best, doesn’t need a kicky confidant? In this scenario, he’s played by Patton Oswalt in an authentic take on a high school nerd twenty years later, making homebrewed liquor in the garage of the house where he lives with his sister, who idolizes Mavis.
Patton, as Matt, was Mavis’ locker mate during high school, but she barely acknowledged his presence—until he was brutally beaten by bullies because they thought he was gay.
As bizarre soulmates with wounded psyches—his from much longer ago and hers more recent, it seems—they make a riveting pair. You almost, almost, hope that Mavis will see the light and realize what a great, available guy he is, a man who would worship the ground she walks on—even knowing her “truth.”
But Reitman and Cody have another ending in mind, and it’s not a typical Hollywood one.
Young Adult, Rated R
Directed by Jason Reitman, written by Diablo Cody.
Running time: 1:34
