Young Adult

Jason Reitman is coming off a big success making YOUNG ADULT, for his previous film was UP IN THE AIR, which exemplified the director's talent for using a blend of comedy and melancholy. Actually, all of Reitman's films have just been getting better and better instead of suffering from the success of a previous entry in the director's oeuvre. YOUNG ADULT, however, is his first backtrack. Teaming up with the writer for his 2007 hit JUNO, Reitman has arranged a film that doesn't have quite the blend that his previous films have had. Diablo Cody's script, and Reitman's approach, is very different here too. Starring Charlize Theron as Mavis Gary, a thirty-seven year old writer of young adult novels, Mavis begins to come under the delusion that, if she wanted to, she could return to her old town of Mercury and steal back her high school boyfriend. In those days, Mavis was the queen bee, the prom queen, and ultimately, peaking. Now she lives in the city, and can say she's a writer the same way a doctorate of music can call himself a doctor. There's a couple of problems with Mavis' scheme though. Primarily, Buddy, the old flame, is now married and has a newborn. But Mavis, who is drunk for pretty much the entire movie, is so completely deluded that she believes he still wants her. Theron conveys this belief well, and her performance is the crutch that YOUNG ADULT's sometimes shoddy ideas have to lean on. She teams up with a fat nerd named Matt who she knew from highschool, and even though he's very pleasantly played by Patton Oswalt, he's basically just another list item of reasons why Mavis is obviously on a decline. Most of the film is pretty entertaining, and even the end is sort of shamelessly stubborn about who the character is. Despite the fact that Mavis never changes in the entire movie, it still feels like immature writing, like nothing more than a cynical statement to be made, without any depth. Perhaps the point is that there are really bitches like Mavis out there, but from the start of the film to the end of the film, I already sort of knew that, and all YOUNG ADULT did was be marginally entertaining in the middle. It's no great success of a film, but, because Reitman's such a good director, there's some funny little in-jokes, and Theron's performance is pretty great.

★★★ out of Five