Young Adult (8/10)

January 19th, 2012

‘I have a lot of problems’, Mavis confides. Well, that much is obvious. Thirty-seven and divorced, overly reliant on booze, self-centred in the extreme, and soon to be finished in her current career, things couldn’t get any worse for her. But they could. Her old high-school sweetheart from back in small town Minnesota has just announced the birth of his first child. He couldn’t be happier. What a great time, then, to go back home and see if they can be reunited, don’t you think? No? Maybe not.

With her little dog safely tucked away in her bag, Mavis (Charlize Theron) checks into Mercury, Minnesota’s best hotel – possibly its only hotel – and arranges to meet said flame Buddy Slade (Patrick Wilson). She suggests the town’s hip bar at 8.30. He says a well-lit restaurant-bar at 6. After all, he’s got to be back to look after Junior. She turns up all dolled to the nines, which is a lot of nines when you’re Charlize Theron; he arrives in a comfy shirt. These aren’t just crossed wires, they’re positively snarled.

The meeting is observed by Matt Freehauf (Patton Oswalt), another guy from the same year at high school. Unlike Mavis and Buddy, Matt’s school years didn’t go so well. Left permanently disabled thanks to being beaten up over his perceived sexuality, he became even more of a loner happy to get sauced on his own homemade brew. Did someone say booze? That’ll get Mavis’s attention real quick.

Reviews of Young Adult have contained an awful lot of sermonising about Theron’s central character. ‘She’s evil, she’s immoral’, they say, condemning a person simply because her scruples don’t match theirs. I didn’t quite see it that way. I saw a woman with issues, self-centred for sure, but one who has had enormous difficulties in reconciling her current life with her illustrious past one. The Hot Chick of high school, the one voted most likely to succeed, the one who was a successful author, now finds herself divorced and therefore unwanted. So sure, she tries to break up a marriage. What, she’s the first one to do this? As far as crimes go, this isn’t even one.

Young Adult was written by Diablo Cody, and exhibits none of the sarky hipness of her breakthrough Juno. That has to be a good thing. Cody can write in more than one way; female-centred, for sure – nothing wrong in that, either, of course – but with a ‘heroine’ that, unlike the pint-sized pregnant Canadian, she doesn’t require us to love. Mavis displays human traits. Not particularly attractive traits, but a darn sight more realistic than other, perfect movie characters.

Obtaining Jason Reitman to direct again, as he did with Juno, was an equally excellent move. Reitman’s films seem, to me, to be perfect capsules of the times we live in. He holds a mirror up to society, a warped, concave mirror that shows us what we are and where we stand. As with Up in the Air, Reitman’s deft lightness covers up the dollops of sour medicine with a spoonful of funniness; Young Adult has some terrifically warm moments. Cody chips in, too, with some acerbic put-downs of current culture. Mavis writes teen-friendly books that are no longer selling well. ‘Are they about vampires?’ she is asked. It’s billed as a comedy drama, with I would say an emphasis on the latter. It’s one of the better ones.

Theron is terrific, Wilson is steady in a role that doesn’t require too much other than a blind ignorance to Mavis’s intentions, and Oswalt is as good here as he’s ever been. I really enjoyed watching him in Big Fan, and he should be used more in movies. Despite product-placement aplenty (I could have murdered a KFC after watching, and the all-new Jeep Liberty sure looks swell) I found Young Adult to be a fascinating unravelling of a woman whose priorities have gone all out of whack, mostly of her own doing but no doubt aided by society’s insistence on putting people on pedestals. Maybe it was her obsessive love of the great Teenage Fanclub song, ‘The Concept’, or maybe it was because of my admiration of Theron, an actress not afraid to act unpleasant roles, but I was prepared to forgive Mavis. Or at least try to understand her.