Nasty, bitchy and…brilliant
Film
YOUNG ADULT
Cert: 15
*****
YOUNG Adult takes a premise from the Hollywood Rom Com Storyline Generator™ and subverts it deliciously.
Charlize Theron plays ageing prom queen Mavis Gary, who returns to her “hick” hometown to try to rekindle her high school romance with Buddy Slade, who is now married with a baby.
She pretends she’s only back in town for “a real estate thing”, soaking up her reputation as the successful girl who left for the big city and a career as a novelist.
In reality, she is a faltering ghostwriter for a cancelled teen series (hence the title) that looks set to be pulped. You often see her hunched over a laptop, grinding out lines of appalling dialogue stolen from local teenagers while drinking – a lot, often whilst driving – and pining over her lost youth. She looks like Sex and the City’s Carry Bradshaw after a crystal meth binge (except, obviously, less like a starving pony that’s strayed too close to a threshing machine). We are treated to repeated shots of her waking up mid-afternoon with a raging hangover, glugging Diet Coke to make the pain go away, and visiting the beauty parlour to smooth things out again.
In the rom com version of Young Adult, Buddy’s wife would be awful. She would probably practice yoga or make bad art. Hilarity would ensue. In this she’s nice; she plays drums in a (terrible) covers band, and does her best to juggle having a life and a baby. Naturally, Gary has nothing but contempt for her, and for everyone else in her “gross” hometown, who have settled for the grinding mundanety of real life. Everyone except for the slightly dopey Buddy – he’s dreamy – mostly because he reminds her of herself but younger. Which is definitely a good thing.
She lives and acts like a poorly fleshed-out character from one of her books, even carrying a – neglected – dog in her handbag. She is the eponymous young adult: a grown woman still mentally residing in what she – probably wrongly – assumes to have been her best years.
Patton Oswalt plays high school geek (another staple rom com cliche) Matt Freehauf, who Gary doesn’t recognize until she realizes he was the “hate crime guy” – so badly beaten at high school for being gay (which he wasn’t) that he still walks with crutches and has a “bit of a nightmare downstairs”.
He and Theron become drinking buddies but it’s never really a friendship. Theron wants to get loaded and Freehauf gets to hang out with the prom queen. The same social hierarchy applies as when they were at school; as Freehauf admits, “guys like me were born in love with women like you”. No mater how messed up Gary gets, however unhappy and spiteful, she’ll always be out of sight on the social ladder. The sparky chemistry between the two is brilliant – that both were left off the Oscar nomination list is this year’s biggest travesty.
Theron’s performance is pitch perfect – there are plenty of laughs but it is all played against a backdrop of misery and spite. There are reasons for her behaviour – alcoholism, depression, overbearing parents – but they aren’t really put forward as excuses. Take these away and you’d still have a spoiled, obnoxious woman.
In fact, Theron is so perfectly unlikable that Young Adult can stray a little close to misogyny. She is the archetypal beautiful, unhinged woman intent on getting her manicured fingernails into your man, no mater what. Give her a few years and she’ll be Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction. Diablo Cody’s (Juno) sharp script, though, makes sure Young Adult stays the right side of the line.
It isn’t giving anything away to say that there is little redemption. This is a film where nobody changes – and they’re all pretty awful most of the time. What a refreshing concept.