Young Adult
Directed By: Jason Reitman
Written By: Diablo Cody
Starring: Charlize Theron, Patrick Wilson, Patton Oswalt
Review By: Griff
Recently divorced fiction writer Mavis Gary (Charlize Theron) is living a repetitive boring life in Minneapolis when finds out that her high school boyfriend (Buddy) has just had his first baby with this new wife. Mavis decides that what she needs to do is break free of her mundane existence and go win back her old boyfriend despite the fact the he is happily married.
Mavis packs up some clothes and heads off to her hometown. On her first night in town she meets Matt (Patton Oswalt) who she went to school with. Mavis tells Matt about her plan to win back Buddy. Matt acts as a sort of Jiminy Cricket to Mavis. He tries to dissuade Mavis from interfering with Buddy’s reasonably happy life. Mavis is determined however, and she tries desperately to steal Buddy away from his wife and child.
Young Adult is extremely well acted. Charlize Theron deserves a ton of credit for being able to keep you interested in a movie with such an unlikable lead character. Mavis is an obsessive alcoholic with a nasty case of Trichotillomania. She is rude to everyone she meets and lives completely in the Id.
Patton Oswalt also demonstrates some surprising range. His character was the victim of a hate crime when some kids in high school mistakenly thought he was gay. For people used to seeing Oswalt in movies like Balls of Fury you will be impressed.
Young Adult is similar in a lot of ways to Bad Teacher where Cameron Diaz played a morally ambiguous, self-centered, alcoholic. Like Bad Teacher both of these movies suffer from the same problem. The characters don’t really seem to show any growth. It’s fine to make a movie about a person with some character flaws that needs to grow but by the end of the movie that person should actually show some growth. Otherwise, what was the point? Both movies had endings that seemed rushed and lacked character development and both movies were disappointing. Young Adult gets 1 and half guys out of three.
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
I liked the movie but I see where you are coming from. Charlize Theron’s character isn’t stagnant but Reitman has her character arc end exactly where it began. I’m not quite sure what he meant by that, except maybe to piss us all off ahah
Does Theron get naked?
Young Adult is a movie that takes lots of risks, and doesn’t play out the way you would think. It also has a lead character that isn’t really likeable, and by the end we don’t like her anymore. Surprisingly it all works out amazingly. The performances from Charlize Theron and Patton Oswalt are nothing below phenomenal. Reitman still hasn’t made a bad movie, and he re-tams with Diablo Cody for a script that embodies it’s characters completely. The dialog launches this movie into something special. I never thought you could have a character study with this kind of character, but this movie proved me wrong. I thought this was a great movie and one of the best of the year. So I disagree here, how can you compare Bad Teacher to this. That was a truly bad movie. Well written review, I just don’t agree with it’s content.
Hi Alec,
Thanks for stopping by the site. I had a long discussion with someone about this movie just yesterday and he almost had me convinced that the ending was good because it was unpredictable and it was more realistic that Charlize character doesn’t grow at all as a person at the end. I can see the point but I still disagree. I am not sure how you can’t draw a comparison between Bad Teacher and this movie. Simply because you enjoyed one film but not the other? Both movies feature women in the lead role that are narcissistic, alcoholics bent on trapping their “man” at all costs. That is only touching the surface of the comparisons. The themes are extremely close. I enjoy Reitman and I have been pretty impressed with his work so far. (Up in the Air is his best in my opinion.) but the dude has some serious mommy issues. His last 3 films all feature moral ambiguous females. A pregnant teen in Juno, a suburban housewife who is a strumpet in Up in the Air, and now Young Adult. His movies are beginning to border on misogyny.
What I meant was Bad Teacher was a movie I hated, and Young Adult is one I really liked. Young Adult is darker as well. I also agree with that guy who told you about the ending of Young Adult. I have loved all of Reitman’s movies (I agree that Up in the Air is his best), and I do agree that he should make a different kind of movie next time. Thanks for actually replying to me, not all sites have done that.
The point of Young Adult, to me, was that the character doesn’t change. They have the scene where it looks like she is about to, then she gets over it. I didn’t like this film as much as Reitman’s other movies, though.