Diablo Cody & Jason Reitman’s ‘Young Adult’

[sws_blockquote_endquote align=”” cite=”” quotestyle=”style03″]We have innately bad human behaviors that sometimes we can explain and justify. It’s easy to say someone’s an a–hole because they had this, this and this happen to them, so we have to forgive them. But what if someone was just an a–hole? That’s interesting to me. – Charlize Theron [/sws_blockquote_endquote]

Charlize Theron won the Best Actress Academy Award for playing a real life serial killer in the film Monster (2003). In the upcoming 2012 film Snow White & the Hunstman, she’ll will Wicked Queen. Theron has played her fair share of a–hole characters, and her role in Young Adult is no different.

Lonely and depressed, Mavis Gray (Charlize Theron) drinks her way through most of the movie. One might call her a ‘has been’. She’s that woman who everyone thought would move to the big city and become a huge success after high school. But at age 37, she’s just a no-name ghost writer for a middling young adult book series. She’s divorced, with no kids and only a cute little dog named Dolce.

The only light at the end of her tunnel is the hope of rekindling an extinguished flame with her long-time ex-boyfriend, Buddy Slade (Patrick Wilson). Unlike most late 30-somethings, Mavis (Theron) has retained her good looks and feels entitled to pick up her life with Buddy right where she left it 20 years ago. On a whim, she travels back to her hometown in Minnesota to do just that. She plans to snatch up Buddy from the mundane trappings of small town life and move him with her to Minneapolis.

The fact that Buddy is married and has a newborn child doesn’t bother Mavis a bit. And we watch with curiosity and at times perplexing bewilderment as she embarks on this seemingly impossible – not to mention morally unacceptable – task to break up a happy home.

Despite warnings from an old high school classmate (Patton Oswalt) and her parents, Mavis never gets the hint that the world and Buddy’s world does not revolve around her troubling fancies.

And some people are just like that. Some people never grow up. They just grow older. As Charlize Theron puts it:

[sws_blockquote_endquote align=”” cite=”” quotestyle=”style03″]She’s a bitch… I never expected people to have sympathy for Mavis. And I don’t aim for that. I just aim for understanding: If you can understand her, you might hate her, but if you can understand her, then I’ve done my job. That’s all I care about.[/sws_blockquote_endquote]

Director Jason Reitman (Up In the Air, Juno) and writer Diablo Cody (Juno, Jennifer’s Body) accomplished just that. This film likely will not live up to the success of the duo’s predecessor Juno (2007), due to the largely uneventful plot and the risk of centering a movie around a character, such as Mavis who you never totally dislike but who you’ll never love.

Nonetheless, Charlize Theron turns out a solid performance for an unlikeable character. I doubt you’ll ever cheer for Mavis to get what she wants, but maybe you’ll find some satisfaction in watching her delusion unravel.