Starring: Charlize Theron, Patton Oswalt and Patrick Wilson
Directed By: Jason Reitman
Written By: Diablo Cody
Produced By: Jason Reitman, Diablo Cody, Lianne Halfon, Russell Smith and Mason Novick
Distributor: Paramount Pictures
Rating: R
Running Time: 94 minutes
Website: youngadultmovie.com
Budget: $25 million (estimated)
Genre: Comedy / Drama
Release Date: December 9, 2011 (limited)
Director Jason Reitman reteams with writer Diablo Cody for the new comedy Young Adult, their first collaboration since 2007’s Academy Award-winning Juno. That film followed a wise-beyond-her-years Ellen Page struggling with her teenage pregnancy. Young Adult flips the formula, focusing on a grown woman whose utter lack of maturity stems from a teenage miscarriage. My, how we’ve grown.
Charlize Theron (Hancock) is the immature woman in question, a burnt-out ghostwriter reeling from a recent divorce and the cancellation of her young adult book series. She is pushed past her breaking point when high school sweetheart Patrick Wilson (“A Good Man”) emails his first child’s birth announcement. Convinced this innocent gesture is a masked cry for help, Theron returns to her hometown of Mercury, Minnesota to free Wilson from his wretched small town existence.
There, she discovers an unlikely confidant in Patton Oswalt, a high school classmate crippled by his peers for suspected gayness. As they bond over bottles of homemade whiskey in his basement lair, Oswalt begins to see through Theron’s faltering mean girl act. He attempts to serve as a futile voice of reason against Theron’s increasingly unhinged take on reality.
When Theron is in full-on attack mode, she is a true joy to watch. The actress wisely allows her age to show through her model good looks, pulling her Kewpie-doll lips into a bitter scowl and her perfectly-sculpted eyebrows into a menacing arch. Much of the film’s humor stems from her character’s utter incapability to view a situation from anything but the most selfish of perspectives. But Theron is an actress capable of handling extremely difficult material, and Young Adult never rises to meet her talent.
It doesn’t seem too concerned with exploiting the talent of the rest of its cast, either. Cody populates the town of Mercury with poorly drawn high school stereotypes that never bother to extend beyond their initial descriptions: high school sweetheart, wallflower, outcast, stalker, cheerful handicapped guy. But from a narrative perspective, wouldn’t it have made more sense to confront Theron’s character with a cast of characters who had actually changed in some way since high school?
Patrick Wilson is wasted as a good-natured simpleton too bland for anyone to actually desire. His wife (Elizabeth Reaser, the Twilight saga) is little more than a loose conglomeration of unassailable traits: a laid-back earth mother and chick drummer who works with developmentally-challenged children. Even Patton Oswalt’s grown-up man-child doesn’t have much more to define his character than action figures and a set of crutches.
Mid-way through the film, Theron sits at her parent’s kitchen table and announces she thinks she’s an alcoholic. Her parents, not ready to deal with such an admission, pretend nothing has happened, and assure her that she’s fine. Later on, during the ridiculously-staged public confrontation, Theron reveals the miscarriage she believes to be the root of all her problems. She isn’t looking for sympathy or hoping to unburden her soul – she’s using the fact as a weapon in her verbal attack. This isn’t a comic character. This is a fundamentally damaged human being.
There’s a better film in here somewhere, following this broken person who desperately wants help but doesn’t understand how to receive it. That film might make full use of the talents in front of and behind the camera. This one doesn’t.
2 Stars (out of 5)
