Young Adult: Review

Without any shame I love Charlize Theron (in a purely professional sense of course). What most actresses wouldn’t even touch with an oscar shaped bargepoll, Charlize grabs with gusto. Young Adult is one of those roles and I am both shocked and unsurprised by its lukewarm box office performance and lack of radar coverage.

Charlize plays Mavis Gary, former prom queen, divorcee and ghostwriter of a waning young adult novel series. Upon receiving an email from her former high school sweetheart (patrick wilson) regarding his new baby, her twisted mind takes that as a call for help, she believes he needs rescuing from his domestic purgatory. She heads back to her podunk town, heels in tow and sets about her quest for home wrecking.

Now I can see why this would put a lot of the core audience off, this is ostensibly a romantic comedy but turned on it’s head, so you would expect it aimed to draw in a fairly female crowd, however audiences do not generally respond to the titular character being a home wrecking hussy. This is the dichotomy of this film, Charlize Theron’s character is a raging bitch, a completely unlikable force of nature who is narcissistic to the core. However, alcoholism, the hangdog face, the unbearable sadness of her life makes you look past that and see a woman who is completely struggling to come to grips with adult life and where her life has ended up.

There is a lot of hilarity and gravitas to Charlize’s performance, particularly a gut wrenching and cringeworthy scene at the end where we learn the heartbreaking root of the character’s anger and arrested development. A special mention has to go to Patton Oswalt who plays Matt Freehauf, a grognard who makes Star Wars themed whiskey in his garage. Without him this film would not work, he is needed as an anchor and the voice of the audience in all of Charlize’s mental bitchyness.

The ending of this film is also completely unexpected and if you ask me works perfectly and is not the best “message” in terms of hollywood moralising but is the best message for the character and I wholeheartedly recommend it.