Young Adult [HD]

Uncomfortable, Brutal, And Even Sad: This Black Comedy Is Also A Stunningly Bleak Character Study
In the latest collaboration between director Jason Reitman and writer Diablo Cody (they gave us "Juno" and she won a Screenplay Oscar in the process), our protagonists may be older, but that doesn't make them any wiser. In fact, Mavis Gary (Charlize Theron) still resides in the rarefied land where her high school days were the pinnacle of her success. She has an idealized memory of her popularity and perceived true love (Patrick Wilson), so when confronted with the disappointments in her big city existence--she attempts to reclaim some of her former glory. Specifically, she hatches a plot to return to her home town and rescue Wilson from what she believes is his domestic prison--namely a wife (Elizabeth Reaser) and new baby. "Young Adult" is marketed as a black comedy, and it certainly has some of the most awkward and uncomfortable humor that you're likely to encounter. But in essence, it seems like a dramatic character study whose narrative arc is depicted largely through...

Truth Hurts, Donut?
This was a tough watch. I expected anti-hero dark comedy, but it's far more dark than comedy. Sure, we're given plenty of the 'oblivious beauty queen in state of painfully arrested development.' It was fun watching her attempts to skew reality in the way that best suited her needs; that's the defining trait of the Mean Girls, after all. Then the pity happens. We see that she's seriously broken under there, and we're expected to feel bad for her. Poor, sad drunk pretty girl. And just when she seems to be at the brink of a genuine breakthrough, she hops back into her broken life and drives away.

While I admit that a magical Romey & Michelle redemption for Mavis would have infuriated me, it would've been nice to see that she learned even the slightest bit from her escapade. But the fact is, some people simply don't learn. They peak at 17, then face 60 long years of mediocrity. That's an ugly truth. Some people have their lives utterly ruined at 17 and never quite get over it,...

Reitman an auter? Maybe.
Thought I'd put in my two cents. Unlike his father, Reitman is rapidly becoming a genuine American auteur. No one working in Hollywood today gets the incipient loneliness and social malaise of post-modern America, "How we live today," as it were. His last two films, this one and Up in the Air, totally nail all the odd comic elements of a society going joylessly through the motions - the sterility and formlessness of airport culture, the soulless vapidity of small town life, the weird highway ramp hotel non-culture, successful people trapped in their own self-made defensive cocoons, not to mention the perverse enjoyment of misery and depression fueled by endless booze and empty sex..Reitman is basically aiming his films at people who read things other that Twilight. He is drawn to writers like Walter Kirn and Diablo Cody because they seem to have something to say about the sad Way We Live Now that is not driven by research and age demos. The irony of Mavis, the ultimate "hip" urban...

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