Movie Review: 'Young Adult'

All you have to do to establish that a character is dead-beat, no-life, loser: begin the film with a series of cuts of the lead lounging around in a ratty Hello Kitty shirt and sweats, smeared makeup under her eyes, with Kendra and Keeping up With the Kardashians playing in the background. Yup, Mavis Gary has fallen a long way since the glory days of high school. She’s the ghostwriter for a once-popular young adult book series that has just been cancelled, may very well be an alcoholic, and is single after a failed marriage. What could possibly push someone that’s hovering over the edge of insanity overboard? Getting a baby announcement email from her former high-school sweetheart Buddy (Patrick Wilson), that’s what. In the similarly mean-spirited vein as another film that came out this year, Bad Teacher, Mavis has less-than-honorable intentions at the heart of the plot of Young Adult; after receiving that baby announcement, Mavis decides to pack up and head to her small hometown of Mercury, Minnesota to try and end Buddy’s marriage and win him back.

Charlize Theron throws herself into the role, playing the prom queen bitch perfectly. She has this squinty-eyed, sour scowl on her face for so much of the film, that I genuinely forgot how damn pretty she is when she smiles – which we see for the first time when she reunites with Buddy at a bar with the intention of getting this family-man good and wasted. And it’s unsurprising that when we first see her smile, it’s not even a real smile at all; when she see’s Buddy for the first time in years, her face and voice contort into an image of false cheer. She’s putting on an act. When she’s not around Buddy, Mavis speaks in this sort of chill, almost stoned way – she’s like the ridiculously unkind, adult version of Juno. Which is actually fitting, seeing as Diablo Cody, the acclaimed writer of Juno, wrote the screenplay. (And while we’re on the subject -- what is with this this writer and branding her characters with horrendously unreal and weird names? Juno? Mavis? But I digress.)


Filled with dark humor, Young Adult isn’t the movie to run out and see if you’re looking to laugh out loud. You’ll chuckle at an inappropriate crack a character will make occasionally, and you may even feel slightly unfulfilled by the end. Where Young Adult succeeds is in the same place where Bad Teacher ultimately failed: showing the human side of this beautiful, bitter, bitch of a woman. Mavis is anything but likeable, but in this case, it doesn’t really matter. I didn’t have to like Mavis, but getting into her mindset definitely let me feel pity for her. Yes, I felt pity for someone that looks like Charlize Theron…that’s how I know she did one a hell of a job.

Rating: B