Movie Madness - Young Adult | Arts & Culture

The following may/probably contains spoilers:

Deception is a fine art. People deceive you in order to get your money or to make you think they’re good when really they’re bad. This is where the movie ‘Young Adult’ comes in.

When I first saw the trailer for the movie I thought “Cool, Jason Reitman is directing this. Thank You For Smoking and Up In The Air are some really solid films.” Also the casting is great, Charlize Theron and Patton Oswalt? A very unlikely pair but that’s what makes films great and to top it off you have Patrick Wilson playing Theron’s supposed lost love interest. So what could go wrong? A lot and it goes by the name of Diablo Cody.

Diablo Cody is Spanish for Hollywood poison. She’s a terrible writer. I’ve personally never liked her. Everyone thought Juno was cute and quirky while I thought it was a SheekGeek’s lucid dream which is my waking nightmare. The lingo in the movie was what really bothered me. It was trying to be overly hip and seemed to be yelling at the audience “Am I cool yet?” but I’m not reviewing that.

This is ‘Young Adult’. Soon after her divorce, a fiction writer returns to her home in small-town Minnesota, looking to rekindle a romance with her ex-boyfriend, who is now happily married and has a newborn daughter.

The plot sounds kind of abrasive but there have been similar movies before. When I saw the trailer I thought it was going to be a really funny and dry film with a few twists and turns but I was dead wrong.

The movie begins great with Mavis Gray  (Theron) realizing she needs a change. She’s just been going through the motions in life with her feet not really on the ground then one day she gets an e-mail from her former flame, Buddy Slade, (Wilson) and in the e-mail is a picture of his new baby. So she decides to start where it all began, her hometown. A few funny exchanges take place such as her conversation with the hotel clerk and her always humorous pup. She decides to hit up a bar in her hometown where she then reunites with her former classmate, Matt Freehauf (Oswalt). A few funny exchanges take place between the two of them. Gray was clearly the popular girl in high school who got everything she wanted and was a big partier while Freehauf spent much of his time in his basement repainting his dungeon master figures wishing for the warmth of a woman.

Gray then tells Freehauf of her master plan to win back Slade’s love for her. Freehauf tries to talk some sense into Gray but she just laughs it off. So far the movie has just been quirky and goofy/crazy. For awhile the movie plays off this but it isn’t until we get introduced to Buddy’s family that the film takes a left turn into Psychoville.

Buddy Slade’s new family seems to be enjoyable and he is satisfied with life and Theron’s character seems to be the crazy woman who won’t just let it GO! At this point I became alienated from Theron’s character especially when she kisses a very drunk Buddy Slade who probably will not remember it. The way Rietman films the rest of the film looks like something out of a Todd Field movie where it takes a jagged turn from quirky comedy to straight up scary (spice) drama. The rest of the film has comedy sucked right out of it and just became dour, vapid, and depressing. This is why I hate Diablo Cody, she WON’T STICK TO ANYTHING! She’s like a wall crawler except wall crawler’s are fun to watch and she has the writing attention span of a speed addict.  

It’s later revealed that Buddy has invited her to the baby naming ceremony for his new child. She shows up to think he invited her there to proclaim his love but it turns out Buddy’s wife invited her because she felt sorry of her. That’s totally what you do when a lunatic wants your man; invite her to a BABY NAMING PARTY! There is a “dramatic sequence” where Theron’s character finally breaks down and everyone tells her to get help. That’s the climax of the film. Theron is asked to get help. I’ve seen better tension in DARE ads.

I’ll breeze through the rest of the film and say it wraps up very awkwardly. What began as a dry comedy ends as Fatal Attraction for Hipster’s.

I give this film half of Frankie Goes to Hollywood (half a star) because relax Diablo Cody; you’re a one hit wonder.