Mavis (Charlize Theron) lies face-down and spread-eagled on her rumpled bed, unmoving as the TV blares Kardashianiana in the background. Dead? No. Just dead drunk.
A writer of young adult novels, Mavis blows most of her time in her Minneapolis condo either swilling Maker’s Mark like it’s Kool-Aid, recovering from hangovers or making excuses about missed deadlines. She’s selfish, abrasive and not very self-aware, as she demonstrates when she visits her tiny Minnesota hometown and, while wearing her old boyfriend’s sweatshirt and standing on the grounds of her old high school, tells a friend, “You can’t keep dwelling in the past.”
We’re meant to see that Mavis was a high school superstar who has enjoyed some success since then but, emotionally, has never managed to make the leap to maturity. There’s something cool about how Diablo Cody’s “Young Adult” screenplay lets Mavis be Mavis, with no promise this unpleasant person will learn any lessons or redeem herself. In fact, whether she’s belittling the difficulties of a disabled former classmate (Patton Oswalt) or openly lusting after her now-married former boyfriend (Patrick Wilson), she remains oblivious to the effect she has on other people.
Cody does a nice job with a moment, set at a christening Mavis hopes to turn into a make-out session, where we finally understand how Mavis fits into her small town.
But even if the heroine is going to be an anti-heroine, the movie needs to do something other than score points off of her. Even an extreme example of an anti-hero such as “Taxi Driver” had sympathy for the messed-up values of its main character.
But not “Young Adult.” Once it lets us see how beautiful and sharp-witted Mavis is, it delights in taking one jab after another.
There is a subtle difference between a movie that is interested in and perhaps a little sad about the behavior of a screwed-character and a movie that simply wants to pile on her, and I think the right director could have done something to right the ship.
Jason Reitman, who also made Cody’s “Juno,” does terrific work with the actors. Theron has never been this direct and – g-and-t’s aside – lucid, and she’s surrounded by supporting talents such as Oswalt, Jill Eikenberry and Elizabeth Reaser. But the ironic sentimentality Reitman brought to “Juno” is wrong for “Young Adult,” which would benefit from the compassion and sharp detail that someone along the lines of the late Robert Altman could have contributed. (Altman might also have managed to shed light on the other people in the movie, who are only seen in relation to Mavis and who, thus, seem to have no off-screen lives.)
I’m probably being harder on “Young Adult” than it deserves. In addition to its fine performances, it has some wryly amusing scenes. But, mostly, it’s a missed opportunity. I’m way into the idea of a female lead who – like the one in “The Opposite of Sex” – does not curry any favor with the audience. And the situation, a disappointed adult returning to the scene of her former glory in an attempt to re-capture some of it, is also ripe with possibility. But it remains just a possibility because, once you understand the pun of the movie’s title, that’s about all the insight “Young Adult” will give you.
Chris Hewitt can be reached at 651-228-5552.
“YOUNG ADULT”
Directed by: Jason Reitman
Starring: Charlize Theron, Patton Oswalt
Rated: R for very strong language, binge drinking and sexual situations
Should you go? If you’re a Theron fan, maybe, but the movie misses the mark. **
