Young Adult

Director: Jason Reitman
Cast: Charlize Theron, Patton Oswalt, Patrick Wilson and Jill Eikenberry
Releasing in cinemas: 26 January  2012
Rated: M

The combination of screenwriter Diablo Cody and director Ivan Reitman has already brought us one brilliant film, in the form of 2007’s Juno. Now they’ve teamed up again for Young Adult, and while this is also a black comedy, it presents is a rather bleaker and more biting excursion into the life of a young(ish) woman.

The lead character, Mavis Gary - played by Charlize Theron - is a real piece of work. She was the girl at school all the others both loved and hated. You know the type - successful, sexy and popular; but so much so that it seeds resentment and jealousy. Now, Mavis is that girl 20 years later. Suffice to say, not much has changed except that the mediocrity of her life has done little to dull her delusions of grandeur. She’s no longer the popular one, but continues to believe she is.

Mavis considers herself superior to her classmates from the small town of Mercury, Minnesota because she has a career of sorts in the ‘big city’ of Minneapolis. While she likes to think of herself as an ‘author’, she’s really more of a ghost writer, pumping out ‘young adult’ genre novels. The once-popular series on which she’s working is coming to an end, and Mavis is way behind presenting the draft for the final book. Of course, the fact that she’s an (undiagnosed) alcoholic with a weakness for one-night stands isn’t helping.

However, an unexpected email announcing the birth of a baby in her hometown is the catalyst for radical action on her part. The baby belongs to her old high school flame, Buddy Slade (Patrick Wilson). Somehow Mavis interprets the email as a cry for help from Buddy, and sets off for Mercury to win him back.

One of the most notable features of Young Adult is the sheer ferocity of the screenplay. Cody lays basically all the characters - and especially Mavis - bare. It’s painful to watch at times as these flawed people orbit each other in ever-decreasing circles until the inevitable denouement. At the end of the film however, there is catharsis but not resolution. Mavis doesn’t find redemption, she doesn’t stop drinking and she doesn’t piece her life back together. In what is essentially a Hollywood picture, those are brave choices to make.

That’s brought into sharp focus with the character of Matt Freehauf, played by Patton Oswalt. Matt is the only person in Mercury who kind of ‘gets’ Mavis. He’s damaged goods, both literally and figuratively. In high school, he was viciously beaten because some ‘jocks’ thought he was gay. The incident caused a stir - until the media discovered Matt wasn’t really gay, and thus the beating wasn’t the ‘hate crime’ they were looking to report. So Matt was basically screwed over twice. In the film, despite staying in Mercury, he could be considered more successful than Mavis. He’s an accountant, he has few responsibilities and gets to do pretty much whatever he likes. Cody doesn’t pull any punches with Matt either, although he’s certainly a more sympathetic character than Mavis.

As you might expect, the film is filled with wry observations about the state of American society. Mavis pointedly decries the commercialisation of her hometown, with generic chain stores filling bland shopping malls. It’s lost on her though that her work in the ‘franchise’ book series is essentially the same thing; a pollutant on the cultural, rather than the visual, landscape.

The character-driven nature of the screenplay calls for some powerful performances, and the experienced cast deliver. Charlize Theron (Monster) is mesmerising as the broken, deluded Mavis. The really amazing thing about the performance however is that despite the character’s many and major flaws, she allows us in to see the human side of Mavis. After all, who among us hasn’t misread a situation and made a fool of ourselves? The fact that Mavis does it more often and to a much greater extent doesn’t diminish the fact that it’s behaviour familiar to all of us.

Patton Oswalt (United States of Tara TV) is wonderful as Matt; while Patrick Wilson (Insidious) is pitch-perfect as the befuddled Buddy. Look out for a trio of wonderful supporting turns from Elizabeth Reaser (Twilight) as Buddy’s wife; Collette Wolfe (Cougar Town TV) as Matt’s sister; and Jill Eikenberry (Arthur - 1981) as Mavis’s mother.

Given its uncompromising screenplay and lack of a formulaic ‘happy ending’, I suspect Young Adult might struggle at the box office. This is most assuredly not a ‘date movie’ nor is it something that teens would sit through. But if you want to see some of the finest talent currently working in Hollywood put on a bravura display of pure filmmaking, then this could just be the film for you.

David Edwards