Academy Award winner Charlize Theron plays Mavis Gary, a writer of teen literature who returns to her small hometown to relive her glory days and attempt to reclaim her happily married high school sweetheart (Patrick Wilson).
Young Adult is a brave film for actress Charlize Theron to have taken on. Brave because she plays a largely unlikeable and unpleasant character: Mavis Gary, a ghostwriter of disposable novels aimed at teens, who is as ugly on the inside as she is abrasive on the outside, and whose journey back to her childhood hometown involves making life a lot more uncomfortable for many of its inhabitants. But with an actress of Theron's calibre at the centre of it all, somehow we still come away from the film feeling a kernel of sympathy for Mavis, as well as a slightly deeper understanding of the experiences that have led her to become the bitter, selfish person that she now is.
The plot revolves around Mavis returning to Mercury, Minnesota, after seeing an online picture of the newborn child of her high-school boyfriend, Buddy Slade (Patrick Wilson). As the story unfolds, we witness Mavis' crass and misguided attempts to seduce Buddy, and separate him from his wife Beth (Elizabeth Reaser). And at the same time, she encounters and forms a bond with an ex-classmate, Matt Freehauf (Patton Oswalt), who reveals that his own childhood wasn't as idealised as Mavis remembers hers to be.
Without giving away too much of the plot - as there are only a handful of truly meaningful developments, which would be ruined if you knew them ahead of time - I think it's fair to say that this film functions as a smart commentary on stunted adolescence and people who can't let go of their highschool years, while also providing a certain amount of adult drama for viewers to get their teeth into.
Mavis, in particular, is a wonderful creation: funny, tragic, likeable and offensive all at the same time, with her many character traits being held in a delicate balance through Theron's masterful performance. When the big reveal of her innermost secret finally takes place, it's a scene in which myriad tangled emotions are channeled into a single, powerful scene, and one that retrospectively changes your understanding of everything that has gone before it - helping to justify a story that might have otherwise seemed pointless and meandering without such a definite punctuation mark at the end.
Patrick Wilson and Patton Oswalt also do well in their supporting roles, juggling comic performances with slightly meatier and more serious content in a way that never sells either aspect short.
Even if the plot is a bit on the thin side and takes a little too long to make its point - and once it gets there, spells its ideas out in a way that's a little too on-the-nose - Young Adult is worth watching just for Theron's excellent performance as the kind of character that most A-list actresses would be afraid to even touch. And for that, she should be congratulated.
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Charlize Theron stars in this comedy drama from director/writer duo Jason Reitman and Diablo Cody, the team behind the 2007 film 'Juno'. Spoiled, self-centred 37-year-old former prom queen Mavis Gray (Theron) returns to her hometown in the deluded hope of rekindling a relationship with her childhood sweetheart, Buddy Slade (Patrick Wilson), who is now married to Beth (Elizabeth Reaser) and has just become a father for the first time. Despite these sizeable obstacles, Mavis refuses to take no for an answer and proceeds to bulldoze her way through town, offending and upsetting pretty much everyone she meets as she obstinately pursues her dream.
Please note this is a region 2 DVD and will require a region 2 (Europe) or region Free DVD Player in order to play. Upon returning to her small Minnesota hometown to win back her high school sweetheart (Patrick Wilson) who's now married with children divorced young adult fiction author Mavis Gary (Charlize Theron) forges an unexpected bond with another former schoolmate (Patton Oswalt) who's had a particularly difficult time moving on in life. Juno collaborators Jason Reitman and screenwriter Diablo Cody re-team for this Paramount Pictures production.
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