The studios have gone absolutely bananas over the past few weeks, pushing out whatever great films they can in a last-ditch effort to grab some Oscar consideration and some holiday moviegoer cash. There are so many great movies out right now that I could go to my local multiplex at any given time of day and find something worthwhile playing in the next few minutes. And that’s exactly what I did today. Getting there in time for Tintin or The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo would’ve been nice, but I guess that’s luck of the draw for you. Though to be clear, I had no problem catching up on the latest from Diablo Cody and Jason Reitman anyway. So let’s take a look at Young Adult.
This is the story of Mavis Gary (Charlize Theron, also a producer), the very definition of a person who peaked in high school. Back when she was growing up in tiny little Mercury, Minnesota, she was the prettiest prom queen in her high school. Though she moved to the big city of Minneapolis at some point in the two decades after, she never lost the spoiled belief that she can get anything she wants just by looking pretty and wishing really hard. Her questionable mental health is a proposed reason for this, though I’m sure the rampant alcoholism and the steady stream of E! reality shows on her TV aren’t helping either.
Anyway, Mavis works as a young adult author. She’s terrible at it, but the obsession with her adolescent years more than compensates for her lack of writing talent. Then again, Mavis is only a ghost writer who does all the work while the series creator gets all the credit. Oh, and Mavis is just starting work on the final entry, since the series just got cancelled after a sharp downturn in popularity.
Given all of this information, it should come as little surprise that Mavis is a wreck at the start of the film. When we first meet our protagonist/antagonist, she’s starting the day hung over, popping out her breast pads, and gulping down a two-liter of Diet Coke as she wanders around her mess of an apartment. Things don’t get much better when Mavis gets an e-mail from an old flame (Buddy Slade, played by Patrick Wilson), announcing the birth of his new daughter. Mavis takes this as her cue to go back to Mercury, break up Buddy’s marriage, and get together with him like they were supposed to back in high school.
Next, let’s meet Patton Oswalt’s character. In high school, Matt Freehauf was an overweight nerd. As an adult, Matt Freehauf is an overweight nerd with a leg brace. Yeah, Matt was very nearly beaten to death in high school by a bunch of jocks who thought he was gay. But since it isn’t technically a hate crime if the victim isn’t actually gay, the jocks got off with a slap on the wrist and Matt got a lifetime handicap.
Matt is a very sweet and intelligent geek who compensates for his insecurities with wit. This role is so far into Patton Oswalt’s wheelhouse that it had to have been written for him. And of course, he absolutely nails it.
Aside from Oswalt’s performance, the most notable thing about Matt is in the nature of his connection with Mavis. Back in high school, one was the outcast and the other was the popular girl. Now, they’re both a pair of proud misfits who never outgrew adolescence. Of course they’re going to gravitate toward each other. Still, what really powers the relationship is that unlike Mavis, Matt is perfectly used to being misunderstood. He isn’t living in some fantasy world where he gets everything he wants. In fact, he’s got the opposite problem: He lives in constant sorrow over his very real setback (the leg injury) as opposed to a fictional setback (Buddy loves Mavis but is trapped in a loveless marriage).
Speaking of Buddy, Patrick Wilson is in this movie. He’s a Watchmen alumnus, so of course I’m going to cut the guy some slack, not that he needs it. The guy’s a solid actor and he does some decent work here, though I’ll admit that this role doesn’t really offer much to work with. The whole point of this character is that he’s absolutely nothing like the stud in a desperately loveless marriage that Mavis thinks he is, so all Wilson really had to do is act the straight man. And he does it well. Almost too well. Wilson is charming enough in the role, to be sure, but there’s precious little else about this character that’s noteworthy or memorable.
(Side note: J.K. Simmons is nowhere to be found in the cast. This makes the first Jason Reitman film that does not feature Simmons in any capacity. Even more strangely, John Malkovich is credited as an exec producer. I wish I had explanations for either, but I sadly don’t.)
From a technical standpoint, I’d say this is on par with Juno. By that, I mean the cinematography and editing aren’t anything special, but the writing is superb. Though Diablo Cody has a lot to learn about avoiding predictability, she’s a natural at writing dialogue, and her characters jump right off the page. Her talent meshes nicely with Reitman, who can coax amazing wall-to-wall dialogue scenes out of everyone on both sides of the camera.
Another smart thing about this movie — I don’t know if it was Reitman, Cody, or possibly both to thank for this — is that the film spends a great amount of time focusing on Mavis’ makeup routines. This may sound boring, but it’s very important to establish the obscene amount of work that Mavis puts into making herself look presentable. In doing so, the movie is stating point-blank that everything this woman shows of herself to the world is a lie. We’re not meant to see Mavis as one of those rare and lucky women who can look beautiful without any effort. She’s a wreck of a human being and she goes through a lot of trouble to persuade herself and others to the contrary.
Unfortunately, this is part of my key complaint with this film: The development of Mavis’ character. See, from the start of this movie clear up until the climax, the film makes it abundantly clear that our lead character is not a woman we’re supposed to sympathize or relate to. She’s the character with delusions and unrealistic expectations of reality, and all the other characters are there to implicitly and explicitly remark about how crazy she is. Yet Mavis carries on in spite of all the admonitions and advice… until the climax. And at that point — just before the end of the movie — we’re suddenly expected to sympathize with this character and be invested in her development as a human being.
She goes through the lion’s share of the movie as a complete heel, only to turn face at the very last minute. That’s an extremely difficult trick to pull, especially with only fifteen minutes or so of the movie remaining, and this movie doesn’t quite manage to stick the landing. It certainly isn’t for lack of effort, but Reitman, Cody, and Theron just couldn’t quite sell this abrupt change in a plausible way. It had to be more gradual.
Young Adult is just okay. It wasn’t nearly as funny as I’d have expected a Cody/Reitman collaboration to be, the plotting is totally predictable from start to finish, and the ball was pretty badly dropped on Mavis’ character development arc. On the other hand, there are some amazing performances to be seen here — particularly from Theron and Oswalt — and the dialogue flies off the page. I don’t know if this is something that absolutely must be seen in theaters, but it’s definitely worth a rental at least.