Young Adult

While reading some of the critic's reviews for Young Adult, I came across the term "perpetually adolescent". I thought it was most fitting to describe the heroine and main character of the film Young Adult. She is stuck in her popular mean girl phase from high school. The problem is she is now in her her late thirties and that schtick grows quite tiresome and sad when one is pushing forty. I've come across a few reviews which didn't take kindly to this film due to it's harsh and gritty presentation. I say bring it on! We need more movies like this which don't paint the typical perfect picture of a main character. Far be it for me to be so honest, but some people in this world are exactly like the character of Mavis played wonderfully by Charlize Theron. 

She plays a successful ghost writer of a waning series of young adult novels (ala Twilight). She has moved out of her small town in Minnesota to the big leagues of Minneapolis. She has her own sky rise apartment, dog, and lives alone. We realize early on she has her string of one night stands and unfulfilled relationships. Then she receives an email from her popular ex boyfriend from high school. He's announcing he now has a newborn baby with his wife. Mavis decides this as good a time as ever to go wreck the happy married life he's built for himself and see if he will give her a second chance. Some would say that's outlandish immoral behavior. Sure it is. It's also not as uncommon as you would think. Mavis suffers from living in the past and thinking those were some of her best days. It doesn't make much sense considering she left the town to further her career and is making more money than many of her old classmates. Still she has this unrelenting fixation on her old boyfriend. She feels things were left finished and maybe she should have been the one he married instead of his current wife. Whatever the case may be she ups and leaves her comfy well off life style and head's back to her roots. In the process we see her as vain, snotty, unsympathetic, narcissistic, unstable, and clearly an alcoholic. In a nutshell she's miserable. When she finds herself back where she grew up she runs into an old high school classmate who was the typical nerd she probably never once noticed even though they shared a locker space together for four years. I had to laugh because I myself can barely remember a single face in high school and I was on the other side of the spectrum of being popular. We remember what we choose to and I blocked out my high school years for various reasons. Mavis, on the other hand, was just being a spoiled stuck up teen and thought her world revolved around her boyfriend. The character of Matt hasn't let go of high school either but he's much more bitter and angry about those days since he was beat up by the bullies during an apparent hate crime. Still they bond over drinks (and more drinks) reminiscing about the old days as odd as the comparisons turn out to be. He offers her some advice about not wrecking her ex's marriage. She just scoffs as if her ex wouldn't be thrilled at the notion of being with her. She's so clearly deluded you can almost see the painful execution a mile away. You just know it's going to end badly! 

That it does. She goes out to lunch with Buddy (the ex) who is now married and a father and obviously dull. I often wondered why she was so hung up on someone so clearly wrong for her. But she was thinking of the old days. Her happier days. Before she became a raging drunk with borderline sociopathic tendencies. Once again it's necessary to remind ourselves she has serious emotional and psychological issues. She has no moral values since she is not only toying with the idea of breaking up a marriage but actually attempting to make it happen. What occurs is a slow torturous slide of misunderstandings on her part and she believes Buddy will want to leave his family for her. She is so wrong and so blind it's embarrassing to watch it unfold. It's also a great character study! I am fascinated by Mavis's behavior and the way she dismisses the odd looks from everyone else. They are the crazy ones, not her! She's just looking for some redemption and trying to save this man from suburban hell. Never mind the fact that he might just be happy and she is the one in her own living hell.

The absolute most satisfying aspect of the film was the ending. We expect her to have some sort of epiphany and realize she needs help. She starts to head down that path but then realizes it's much easier to keep on believing her delusions. To keep on behaving like a twenty year old instead of thirty-seven. To act like her life is magnificent and everyone in that small town is stupid and moronic to not have left. She inherits no heightened self knowledge towards the end than she did in the beginning. I absolutely loved that. Some people will never learn. Some will never take that step toward productivity and enlightenment. They find their safe bubble of an existence the only way to be. It's their coping mechanism and they won't let it go for fear of completely unraveling at the seams. I know people like this. They refuse to change and grow into other realms and usually they are holding on to negative aspects or traits. I am guilty myself. It's ironic because as I said before I despised my high school years. I never want to go back there yet I haven't really left my home town. I, too, tend to look down at suburban family life. I see no point in being tied down with children. Most of all I just don't get it. I don't get how one could be happy being a soccer mom. But like Mavis, I'm not exactly happy being single in my mid thirties. So very much like her I am looking for happiness in all the wrong places instead of within myself. Mavis has issues galore and probably needs intense therapy to get over her mis guided ego. I'd be curious to see where someone like her ends up. I'd place odds on it being drunk and alone.

Ironically it was written by the same team who brought us Juno, which is a film I happened to loathe. With darker, realistic, and harsher material I was able to relate to this film much more. It saddens me how it was utterly ignored by the Academy this year. Charlize Theron somehow manages to make herself so unlikable while looking so gorgeous at the same time. I love that she takes on these risky gritty characters. This is a humorous yet unpleasant film and it's the exact type of movies that should be made. It represents realism in a sometimes awkward and painful fashion. But that's life! 

I give it four stars and recommend all the ladies out there watch...and all the writers too!