“Sometimes in order to heal, a few people have to get hurt.”
The H-Bomb: Mavis Gary (Charlize Theron) is the thirty seven year old author of a series of young adult books that have been falling out of popularity as of late. In fact, she has been told that the next book will be the last of the series. This, naturally, has put her life into a kind of tailspin. Not only has she been having trouble writing anything, but she’s also been drinking like a fish and picking up random guys at bars on a regular basis.
But it‘s not just her alcoholism or her professional problems that have her so hot and bothered, there’s also the e-mail she received from her old high school boyfriend, Buddy (Patrick Wilson), containing a photograph of his newborn daughter. After stewing over it for a bit, Mavis spontaneously grabs her little dog and a few bags, and hits the road back to her hometown… with the intention of reclaiming her old beau.
This is the first time she’s been back in town in years, and she’s a little alarmed at how the corporate chains have been taking the place over. They have a Chili’s, a Staples, and even a “KenTacoHut” (those three-in-one places consisting of KFC, Taco Bell, and Pizza Hut). Soon after her arrival, she seeks out a bar and it’s there where she runs into Matt (Patton Oswalt), a pudgy guy she went to high school with, who she remembers as being the “Hate Crime Guy.” Matt is disabled, for reasons you‘ll have to see the movie to find out, with a rather sour outlook on life. He and Mavis form a sort-of friendship which consists mainly of boozing and bitterly reminiscing.
Mavis lets slip that she’s in town to try and win Buddy back, and Matt, knowing that Buddy is a married man with a new child, is less than approving of her plan. But Mavis sees the whole wife and kid thing as merely a minor obstacle that stands between her and Buddy. When she finally does meet up with her old boyfriend, she finds that he does seem to be perfectly content in his new role as husband and father, but she convinces herself that he can’t possibly be, because he leads an utterly boring life in an utterly boring hick town that “stinks of fish shit.” Mavis is oh-so-certain that Buddy would be much happier with her, but will she be able to convince him of that?
Young Adult re-unites director Jason Reitman and screenwriter Diablo Cody, the team behind the Academy Award winning Juno. This time they’re telling a more grown up story about a woman who never really grew up. It’s a more thematically sophisticated film than Juno, and the stylized, hipster dialogue has, for the most part, been set aside, so the characters speak more naturally and sound like actual human beings. It’s also far more cynical than Juno, with a sense of humor that has a lot more bite and a lot less charm.
That leads me to my big hang up with Young Adult, the lead character. Theron is fantastic in the role, make no mistake, this is probably her best performance since her Oscar winning turn in Monster. My problem is with her character, Mavis, in that she is a complete and total bitch. She is truly a horrible, reprehensible person. I am tempted to use the C-word, though I won’t, at least not on the record. Mavis is an extremely selfish, spiteful woman who truly does not give a good God-damn about anyone else. She really could not care less if she breaks up Buddy’s family, or how her words and actions might affect the feelings and well being of others. When she’s not wallowing in her own unwarranted self-pity, she is cruelly putting down and demeaning the people around her. She is indeed a detestable human being.
Usually, in this kind of film, a character like Mavis would go back to her roots, realize what is wrong with her life, learn a lesson, and emerge a better person. That doesn’t happen here. Mavis never learns her lesson, nor does she ever redeem herself at all, and my problem with this is that I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel about her. Or rather, how Reitman and Cody want me to feel about her. This nagged me the most during her pivotal “poor little me” monologue towards the end. If Reitman and Cody want me to have nothing but contempt for Mavis, then they succeeded admirably. If they; however, intended me to feel sympathy for her, in spite of her faults, then they failed miserably.
Another issue I had was that Cody was at times a little too on-the-nose in spelling out some of the themes of the film. For example, there’s one scene where Matt straight up tells Mavis that she’s basically still just a child trapped in the body of a grown woman, as if Mavis’s actions and self-absorbed attitude, not to mention the fact that she dresses like a teenager, weren’t enough to get that across. We the audience are capable of connecting the dots ourselves, Diablo, we don’t need you to do it for us.
Okay, so I’ve given Young Adult a pretty rough ride, so why the three and a half star rating? Because despite all those things, it is still a damn good film. Even if I don’t like Mavis as a person, she still has a scathing sense of humor, that was often very funny, that made me laugh throughout, and again, Theron just hit it right out of the park. Oswalt is also excellent as the down-on-his-luck Matt, a guy who has been crapped on so many times throughout his life, that his negative attitude is understandable, and he, unlike Mavis, is sympathetic. Wilson, meanwhile, plays the friendly, small town nice guy and manages to not make him bland, which is quite a feat in and of itself.
Some people who go into this might be slightly shocked that the sweetness of Juno has been stripped away and in it’s place is a kind of humor that’s mean and pessimistic, but that’s also wickedly funny, provided your sense of humor is the opposite of PC. If you’re someone who must absolutely like the lead character in order to like a film, then you should probably just skip this one. But if you have a taste for bitter comedies with a poisonous edge, then Young Adult may be right up your alley.
