If, like me, you're a movie fan living in Glens Falls, NY, you know that you either drive 30-50 miles to see indie films or just see Mission Impossible 4 over and over. This week, however, thanks to Aimie's Dinner and a Movie, we get to see Young Adult. When you go to the movies, even independent arthouse films, you expect things to go a certain way. In the case of Young Adult, you expect its main character to change. Mavis Gary is a raging alcoholic who routinely wakes up in the clothes she wore the night before to face an increasingly miserable life. She's lost her husband and her career as the author of a series of high school oriented young adult novels is threatened when ehr publisher cancels the series. Everything about Mavis, from the fact that the only TV shows she watches are Gossip Girl and MTV reality shows to her Hello Kitty pajamas, announces to the world that she's immature despite being a divorced 37 year old. If this were a big budget studio film and Mavis was being played by Katherine Heigl, you would expect her to go through a period of painful adjustment then emerge from it a better person who conquers her depression, becomes a stable adult, reconnects with her estranged family and ends up with the perfect guy. This, however, is an indie arthouse film and Mavis is being played by Charlize Theron.
Young Adult reteams screenwriter Diablo Cody with director Jason Reitman, the folks who brought you Juno five years ago. They are both filmmakers who have been allowed to create a diverse body of work in a business where even the most successful of their colleagues usually spend their entire careers making variations of the same thing over and over. Unlike the level headed Juno who clearly sees her situation for what it is and eventually makes correct decisions, Mavis does the exact opposite of what she should do. She receives a mass email from her high school boyfriend Buddy Slader (Patrick Wilson) announcing the birth of his daughter. People in her situation need a moment of clarity to begin the process of setting their lives back on track. Unfortunately, she thinks this is a moment of clarity and that the key to rising out of her increasingly awful life is to return to the small Minnesota hometown that she probably hasn't seen in 15 years and steal Buddy away from his wife. She thoroughly embraces the delusion that Buddy is as miserable as she is and that his birth announcement was a cry for help.
When she gets home, she goes to the bar that was her youthful hangout runs into Matt Freehauf (played perfectly by Patton Oswalt), an old classmate who instantly recognizes her. She doesn't recognize him until she sees the crutch he needs to walk and insensitively refers to him as "the hate crime guy." Back in high school, some jocks who thought he was gay brutally beat him and left his leg and genitals permanently disfigured. Mavis at least partially connects with Matt because, like her, neither he nor his sister Sandra (Collette Wolfe) have really moved on from high school. Though he's a far more likable character than Mavis, Matt still hangs out at the same bar he's been going to since he was a young and spends the time men his age normally spend with their families on painting elaborate Star Wars models and distilling homemade bourbon. It's probably the fact that he has the same crush on her he had in high school that causes him to become her friend and confidante although he does strongly encourage her to give up her insane crusade to get Buddy to leave his wife and go back with her to her Minneapolis home.
You wouldn't know it from the way the plot has been described so far but Young Adult has large amounts of humor that save it from being the depressing and emotionally draining experience that it should be. The funniest scene is her visit to a book store and the glee she feels when she sees that her books have their own display table. As with everything else in the movie, Mavis sees what she wants to see and she doesn't want to see that this is the clearance table, the place books go before being sent back to the publisher.
Looking at other reviews, I see only Roger Ebert recognizing that the driving force behind Mavis' problems, miserable life and insane behavior is her alcoholism. To me, it was the only thing that made sense to me and explained her failed marriage, her stumbling career, her depression and her unstable and insane behavior. I think a lot of people missed it because it's barely mentioned. Mavis does at one point say, "I think I'm an alcoholic," but that is treated as a joke by her parents and dismissed. Diablo Cody takes to heart the old screenwriting rule "Show, don't tell" to heart and shows Mavis drinking life threatening amounts of alcohol (she easily downs Matt's barely aged bourbon) and hopes the audience will pick up on the fact that this lays at the center of every problem Mavis has. I was reminded of other films about immature adults like About A Boy and High Fidelity. In those movies, the lead character is presented by fate with a moment of clarity and an opportunity to turn his life around. Mavis is also presented with a moment of clarity (a real one this time) toward the movie's end but is, instead, given an opportunity to ignore it and go on being the way she is. Whether she does or not is something you have to find out for yourself, something you should definitely do. I will say that, at the very least, she starts showing a little more affection to the dog she's been mistreating the whole movie. You can make up for a multitude of sins when you do that.
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