When Charlize Theron’s character Mavis Gary proposes to her old high school boyfriend Buddy (Patrick Wilson) that he leave their hometown, move to the city with her and leave it all behind, he coolly reminds her that he’s a married man and a new dad. Mavis shoots back, “I know —- we can beat this thing together.” Such a stubborn determination and complete disconnectedness from reality frame “Young Adult,” the latest collaboration between “Thank You for Smoking’s” Jason Reitman and writer Diablo Cody since 2007’s acid-tongued “Juno.”
The trailer might suggest Mavis’ quest to win back her old high school flame after her own failed marriage is a haphazard romp back in her nostalgia-teeming hometown, but “Young Adult” is anything but an easy feel-good flick. Cody, though, manages to make Mavis’ life crises darkly funny with twisted, sardonic wit but the last third of the film take a complete turn for the serious and sad.
When Mavis returns to her hometown of Mercury, Minn., from the “big city” of Minneapolis, she prides herself as better than the small-towners and former classmates who never made it out. As a ghostwriter for a failing young adult fiction series about a group of ultra-cool teen queen bees, it’s clear that Mavis is the perfect fit for the job, as Reitman shows us a woman in her mid-30s who is still in a state of arrested development. Her constant procrastinating, Diet Coke chugging, day-drinking and fixation on the one that got away — to the point of wearing Buddy’s old high school gym sweatshirt — slowly reveal her to be completely unlikable and pathetic.
When she meets Matt (Patton Oswalt), a former high school classmate she barely remembers but who knows a lot about her, at a dive bar in Mercury, we figure out that maybe we aren’t supposed to like her after all. While he recounts to her his memories of having a locker next to her throughout school and never being able to get a girl like her because of constant teasing (and a permanent injury after being jumped by bullies), Mavis can’t see past her own tormented heartbreak to feel sympathy for him until she really needs him to pick up the pieces from her over-thought strategy to win back Buddy, which gives her a glimpse into her own demise.
“Young Adult” is not playfully dark as the trailer suggests, but delivers surprising emotion and depth.