Most people are probably going to hate Young Adult. It stars Charlize Theron as a complete train-wreck of a thirty-seven-year-old woman, a bitter, hateful, mean-spirited person with practically no redeeming qualities. She’s a mess at the beginning of the movie, and she’s a mess at the end of the movie. The final shot cuts to black, and we realize she hasn’t really learned anything. There has been no big epiphany. She’s going to continue to be a hot mess, and she’s probably not ever going to be happy. We walk out of the theatre with our heads shaking, not feeling happy or sad… not much of anything really. But yet Young Adult, which comes from the Juno team of writer Diablo Cody and director Jason Reitman, is an entertaining, darkly funny film, made great for most of the reasons aforementioned. If you’re a more courageous moviegoer, and you’re a fan of black comedies, definitely add Young Adult to your list.
Think What You Want of Young Adult, Charlize Theron is Amazing in This Film
Theron gives her best performance since Monster in this film, playing a former high school prom queen named Mavis, who now works as a YA ghost writer for a teen book series that has failed to be popular for years. She’s a drunk, she’s depressed, living in a high-rise apartment in Minneapolis, and one day she gets the idea to go back to her hick hometown of Mercury to win back her high school beau Buddy (Patrick Wilson), even though she discovers he’s married and has a newborn baby. Upon arriving she meets Matt, a pudgy man who she went to high school with (but doesn’t remember at first), and he soon becomes her confidante as she tries to win Buddy back.
More than anything else, Young Adult is an astonishing showcase for Charlize Theron, who really hasn’t gotten a role this juicy since North Country, six years ago. She’s in practically every shot and for an actress of her beauty to go this dark and this repugnant is a testament to Theron’s willingness to take on complex, messed up characters. There’s a scene toward the end of the movie where she lets it all hang out, literally, with tears in her eyes. It’s difficult to feel bad for this Mavis character, but it’s impossible not to feel impressed by Theron, who deserves more great roles like this one in the years to come.
Jason Reitman is 4 for 4 With the Winningly Dark and Entertainment Young Adult
The other impressive feat of Young Adult is that Oscar-winning screenwriter Diablo Cody, who spread so much whimsy in both the story and the dialogue in Juno, manages to dial back her annoying tendencies here to create a much more true-to-life script that doesn’t have Mavis spouting words strung together that we’ve never heard before in the history of this world. Cody seems to have grown up a bit with this script; while Juno worked as a heartfelt fairy tale, Young Adult is its evil older sister, with a character who would spit on any of the witty dialogue from its younger counterpart.
And there’s Jason Reitman, who made one of 2009’s five best films, the funny and crazy smart Up in the Air, starring George Clooney and Vera Farmiga. It seems odd that he chose to follow that Academy Award nominated movie with a black comedy as dark as Young Adult, which has zero chance of netting any awards nominations, aside from a long-shot nomination for Theron. It appears that this time around Reitman chose a story that he connected with—after all, how many movies are made nowadays with an unlikable female main character? Young Adult is definitely not a film for everyone, but if the trio of Theron, Cody, and Reitman excites you in any way, this will most definitely be the movie for you.
