Film Reviews

Young Adult

• Rating:
• Director: Jason Reitman
• Starring: Charlize Theron
• Details: US/94mins TBC

The reteaming of Juno writer and director Diablo Cody and Jason Reitman was a mouth-watering prospect. Her wonderful way with acerbic dialogue and quirky characters; his ability to make them feel like real people and generally nail a tone. Young Adult is purposefully low key; they didn't really want the hype, and sans said hype and viewed purely as drama - that plays like a sort of sequel to something like Mean Girls - it works very well.
Charlize Theron is a moderately successful writer of a young adult book series, who returns home to a dead-end small town in an attempt to rekindle a once passionate relationship with Patrick Wilson's high school sweetheart - who is now happily married with a new born baby. Stopping at nothing to to win him back, she inadvertently begins an unlikely friendship with a local nice guy she once knew (an excellent performance from comedian, Patton Oswalt) who acts as her conscience - mainly because she doesn't have one.
Given the ostensible comedic tone of Young Adult, it offers a (fairly uncompromisingly) nasty lead character when it slips into its darker moments. This woman is all kinds of selfish, and doesn't appear to have changed a lot since High School. But there are hints of what she's gone through since her teen years, and the bleeding of those details is done in a way that still somehow evokes sprinklings of empathy. This is achieved with her still being a vicious piece of work, mind, and while you never exactly warm to her, it's admirable that no life lessons are learnt here.
The real strong point is Oswalt - who shines as the common sense of the movie. He's there to bring Theron's character back down to earth, which he does with unexpected hilarity at points. An actor with lesser comic timing may have overplayed the "crippled" element somewhat, but Patton is subtle and the perfect balance for Theron's nasty bitch. Reitman see's this early on and continually goes back to the comedian, who's a strong point of an already stellar production. Wilson is typically amiable, but no one else registers enough to matter.
Not a patch on Juno or Up in the Air, this is still an admirably unflinching take on a genre that generally moves in a different direction.

Review by Mike Sheridan