An unrelenting narcissist in desperate need of a nice reality check is at the (awful, little, terrible) heart of Jason Reitman’s Young Adult, the new pitch-black dark comedy starring Oscar winner Charlize Theron that his partner in Juno, Diablo Cody, wrote for our enjoyment...and our self-assessment.
This is the kind of character and material that polarizes audiences, and Reitman handles it...adultly. In the great tradition of the grown-up comedies of 2011, this one takes the cake for being the least interested in redeeming its main character.
Which is just swell, IMHO.
Theron’s Mavis Gary is a 37-year-old living in Minneapolis.
Before I tell you who she is I should tell you who Mavis was. She was that girl. Y’ know, the most popular girl at her Mercury, Minn., high school, the one that everyone there admired (because she had the best hair) and aspired to be, or at least be friends/frenemies/anything with.
She was the one for whom the world wouldn’t be enough because everything she wanted she’d get.
And, whaddya know, in essence that came to happen.
Mavis got out of her (fictional) small town and made it: She moved to the big city...she lives in a nice place, makes a good living, wears designer clothes, and goes on dates with handsome men.
Except none of this fulfills her.
Mavis is not like, a real writer. She’s a ghost for a once-popular series of young-adult novels on its last leg. She drinks way too much and wakes up almost daily in last-night’s clothes, hungover. She has a dog that she neglects in the most spectacular and upsetting of fashions. And her TV is constantly tuned into to E!, which doesn’t do her stunted emotional growth any favors.
She’s a stunner, obviously, but she’s rotten inside: Mavis’ wrong, wrong, wrong in many, many ways, and in Young Adult Cody has written a story that doesn’t let her off the hook at all.
When she receives an e-blast (which she takes as an affront) announcing the birth of her high school sweetheart Buddy Slade’s (Patrick Wilson) baby she decides to do the only sensible thing someone as deluded as she is would do: Head back home to to break up his marriage – she figures together they can “beat this.”
Except, natch, nothing our thoroughly modern antiheroine sets out to accomplish goes as planned. Mercury may not have changed that much – sure, they have a Ken-Taco Hut now – but it has changed. She hasn’t. Not really. And no one takes as much, no, not pleasure but, say, well-meaning delight to point it out than this old schoolmate of hers, Matt (a wisely used Patton Oswalt), whom, of course, she doesn’t remember.
It’s not he wants get at her for the years that she never glanced his way. Matt sees Mavis as a kindred. He also has had a tough time letting go of those so-called glory days, but for more painful reasons. A nerd, he was badly beaten by some jocks, and now he’s literally broken, and he knows that she’s broken, too.
The two forge an unlikely bond and thus Young Adult hits its stride.
This is not a story about growing up, but rather about staying defiantly true to who you think you are. Theron embraces this most unglamorous role and really plays the s--- out of it. Remember, she struck gold for playing ugly in Monster. Here she portrays a different kind of beast, all sneers and eye rolls, but she manages the greatest feat of (thanks in no small measure to Oswalt’s supporting work): she makes Mavis a mean girl with a (awful, little, terrible) heart that beats.
My Rating ***1/2
Photo: Paramount Pictures.
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