“Young Adult” needs to grow up.
It is so hard as a viewer to feel empathy or even sympathy for a slightly insane, alcoholic character of any story especially if that person is unlikable. During a film it’s not a good thing to think to oneself, “If this character is hit by a bus half way through the story I can make it home to finish watching ‘The Roast of Charlie Sheen’ on Netflix.” Now there’s an alcoholic nut job that’s fun to watch.
“Young Adult” is the recent collaboration of Diablo Cody (the screenwriter of “Juno”) and Jason Reitman (the director of “Up in the Air”). With two successful movies, one would think that this would be a combination of the best parts of those creative minds melded together to make a watchable movie. A movie where we can care about the characters until the end.
We are introduced to our main character, Mavis Gary (played by Charlize Theron) in a small apartment in a high rise in Minneapolis. Her vodka bottles, while passed out in bed, surround her. She stumbles toward the fridge to down her first Diet Coke swig of the day battling the effects of last night’s booze. The camera does most of the work here, which forces the audience to bear a heavy load – we have to decide if we like this person or not before she says a single word.
Mavis is a semi-famous ghostwriter for a young adult series of books. Being a young adult writer she is perpetually reliving her own high school experiences. When we meet her we see that she is struggling to write her soon to be last book. She receives an email from her high school ex-boyfriend. It’s an announcement for the birth of his first child. This drives at Mavis’ soul for a day or two before she decides to pack up and pay a visit to her hometown of Mercury, Minn.
After checking in to the local motel, Mavis contacts her old boyfriend, Buddy Slade (played by Patrick Wilson) and sets up a date where she believes she is going to rekindle an old flame. She also runs into a nobody from her graduation class, Matt (played by Patton Oswalt), who remembers everything about Mavis because she was the most popular girl in school while he was only remembered as the victim of a hate crime.
Buddy and Mavis meet up and from that point forward Mavis becomes less and less likeable and more and more drunk. It is difficult to care about someone who will never show any sign of regret or maturity. All during this train wreck Mavis is self-narrating the story via writing one of her young adult stories. Buddy has a wife and child but Mavis has convinced herself that she can break up his marriage and live happily ever after with Buddy. How can anyone looking at this from the outside relate to Mavis?
There is very little reward to the audience as we move along. We finally discover why Mavis has been torturing herself and others around her. Her life is a mess and she was hoping for little bit normalcy by going back home. After a heart-to-heart with one of the townsfolk, Mavis is still convinced that living in a small, rural town in Minnesota is a horrible thing inflicted on anyone. She also is under the belief that everyone in these small towns looks up to the authors and celebrities living in Minneapolis. Oh, please.
Should you see this movie? I don’t know; do you like to be insulted? Your intelligence will be after seeing this ode to the delusional high school prom queen. Many of us graduated high school and have changed in the last 20 years. Many of us are well-rounded healthy individuals who left the past where it needs to be left, in the past.
