{"id":1374,"date":"2012-02-15T09:00:51","date_gmt":"2012-02-14T22:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/?p=1374"},"modified":"2012-02-13T19:55:59","modified_gmt":"2012-02-13T08:55:59","slug":"young-adult","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/?p=1374","title":{"rendered":"Young Adult"},"content":{"rendered":"

\""Yes,<\/a><\/p>\n

In Young Adult<\/em>, Diablo Cody has, honest to blog, written her most natural sounding script to date. Everything that Charlize Theron says could be reasonably expected to emerge from the mouth of a 37 year old woman desperate to recapture the glory of her youth, to recreate the days before real life took hold and disappointment kicked in.<\/p>\n

It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a pity, then, that the film seems so distant. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not happy, but it doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have to be; it would be hypocritical of me to complain on one day that The Artist <\/em>was too happy and Young Adult <\/em>was too bitter. This is supposed to be a character study of Theron\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Mavis Geary, but it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s more of a snapshot of someone that we would like to know better, and someone that we feel more sympathy than distaste for.<\/p>\n

Alas, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not to be, and Young Adult <\/em>comes to us as a compelling film, but one that feels strangely incomplete.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Mavis Geary is suffering writer\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s block over the final instalment of the once popular Young Adult Waverly Prep<\/em> novels. When she receives an email from her high school and college sweetheart (Patrick Wilson) announcing the birth of his baby, she elects to return to her home town to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153save\u00e2\u20ac\u009d him from the drudgery of small town life and to make him realise that they were meant to be together.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

That description could go either way: Mavis is definitely delusional, but Theron mercifully refrains from playing the character as psychotic. Theron is in every scene and effectively carries the movie. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a testament to her ability that she comes across as thoroughly unpleasant, but not loathsome. There is no juncture where you feel like she doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have a reason for her actions. This isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t the first time that she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been developmentally arrested (who among us could forget Mr. F?), but never before has she driven away from a bar while shouting \u00e2\u20ac\u0153babies are gross!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d at anyone who cares to listen. While the movie never quite connects with the audience, Theron brings a vulnerable mixture of vanity and a complete lack thereof to the character and she deserves every plaudit that she receives.<\/p>\n

Less successful is Patton Oswalt\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Matt, who comes on screen as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the hate crime guy\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, Mavis\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 locker neighbour who was beaten to the point of disability for being presumed gay in senior year. The character is more Cody\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s fault than Oswalt\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s, because she leans too heavily on the crutch (yesss<\/em>) of his stereotypical \u00e2\u20ac\u0153fat geek\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (a role that he played, somewhat differently, in 2006\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s execrable Failure to Launch<\/em>). When he offers Mavis some home-distilled whiskey from his \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Mos Eisley\u00e2\u20ac\u009d label, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s nearly impossible not to cringe. Here is a character who has every reason to be angry at the universe, and Cody has wasted a vital part of his screen time by making him play slavishly to a useless type. When he tells Mavis \u00e2\u20ac\u0153guys like me are born loving women like you\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, he damn near derails the movie.<\/p>\n

His situation is unique and leads to the movie\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s only moments of heightened reality, but he decays into a safe figure – not of fun, but of the pathetic.\u00c2\u00a0 This is a great pity, because the rest of the town\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s reception of him – proving that they really just don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t get it, and never bothered trying to know him – is entirely valid. Obvious and catastrophic narrative choices drag the third act into a gutter that can never be escaped, but then the movie is over and we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not sure if anything has been gained from Mavis\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 trip to the past. This ambivalence can be taken as a strength, but Mavis is still near as much of a mystery to both herself and the audience as she was at the film\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s beginning.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Reitman\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s hand is far less judgemental here than the ruinous moralising that he took to Up In The Air<\/em>, but his detachment becomes off putting as a result. The opening credits sequence relies heavily on repetition that draws a fine line between thematic significance and annoying the audience. In Mercury he provides an image of people generally satisfied with the lives that they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re leading, even if a big city outsider might consider their existences dead-end and meaningless, but we get a handle on practically none of the images that we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re presented.<\/p>\n

As Buddy, Patrick Wilson doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know exactly who he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s playing, but he tries his hardest; his weak beard reflects as much. At times it feels as if the film is waging an internal battle between grating quirkiness (\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Nipple Confusion\u00e2\u20ac\u009d) and sincerity. Sincerity edges out in front, but it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s had to compromise itself to get to that point. As the film progresses, Reitman gradually divorces the audience from the experience until we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re left with only the most tenuous connection to the last 94 minutes of our lives.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not surprising that Young Adult <\/em>lasted barely two weeks in Australian cinemas: it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a hard sell that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s awkward and negative, and no one is going to come out of it feeling better about themselves or anyone else. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a mostly good movie, but it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s tough to take and it doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t entirely click.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Young Adult, Diablo Cody has, honest to blog, written her most natural sounding script to date. Everything that Charlize Theron says could be reasonably expected to emerge from the mouth of a 37 year old woman desperate to recapture the glory of her youth, to recreate the days before real life took hold and disappointment kicked in. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a pity, then, that the film seems so distant. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not happy, but it doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have to be; it would be hypocritical of me to complain on one day that The Artist was too happy and Young Adult was too bitter. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2],"tags":[193,192,191,194,195,197,196],"class_list":["post-1374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-film","tag-charlize-theron","tag-diablo-cody","tag-jason-reitman","tag-patrick-wilson","tag-patton-oswalt","tag-small-dogs-smuggled-in-handbags","tag-young-adult"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1HLZ6-ma","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1374"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1374\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1381,"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1374\/revisions\/1381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}