If there is anything more tragic than a former quarterback or prom queen for whom the high school years represent the glory days, it might be that the rest of us — the 99 percent, to coin a phrase — still feel compelled to measure ourselves against them. Never mind that the former prom queen may now be addicted and lonely; she was untouchable in 11th grade, and any sign that we've gained ground would be welcome. As best I can tell, this is the sole point of Facebook, and of Jason Reitman's latest film, Young Adult.
Given Walter Kirn's fiction as a source, Reitman's direction yielded brilliant results in Up in the Air. This film reunites Reitman with Juno writer Diablo Cody, and cheap irony and faux indie sensibilities ensue.
Charlize Theron plays 37-year-old Mavis Gary, a small Minnesota town's former Queen Bee, who has been living in Minneapolis as the ghost author of a young-adult fiction series. After receiving a birth announcement from an old high school flame, Buddy Slade (Patrick Wilson), she returns home with plans to resume their relationship. This is what he wants too, she deduces — why else send the announcement? (Surely, you're starting to see the type of person we're dealing with here.)
Mavis is recently divorced, increasingly drunk and hopelessly self-absorbed. The books in her once-popular series have been remaindered. From our vantage point, it appears her normal state is a partial stupor. But the remnants of her high school class, who haven't seen her in years, see her as a sort-of celebrity. Whether or not they like her is mostly irrelevant; they bow to her in ways familiar to anyone who went to high school, as if acting on instinct. Regardless of how they may feel about her, we sense their lingering desire for her approval. It's the type of begrudging acceptance of social hierarchies that creates a Mavis in the first place.
The exception is Matt Freehauf, played by Patton Oswalt with just the right note of cynical, self-lacerating decency. Matt, who serves as the nagging conscience Mavis can't or won't hear, sees through her scheme to snatch Buddy away from his special-needs teacher wife (Elizabeth Reasor, whose disarming ease redeems a patronizingly idealized character). And yet, having been the chunky, straight high school nerd who was presumed gay and badly beaten as a result (when they meet at a bar, Mavis finally recognizes him as "the hate crime guy"), Matt wouldn't mind Mavis' blessing either. The awkward tension in their scenes — they're adversarial, yet oddly well-matched — provides the movie's best moments.
To say that Theron is beautiful and a brilliant talent is to state the obvious. Unfortunately, that's what Young Adult does best, or at least most. Despite Theron's worthy performance, the movie essentially spends an hour and a half repeating its thesis to diminishing returns, sledge-hammering home its ironies: The writer peddling the glories of teenage popularity has been stunted by it, the person who thinks the small-town folks are losers is really the loser, etc. It's not awful — it's well-acted, and Cody has a keen ear for the ways people use words as both sword and shield — but in the end its vision is just as narrow as Mavis'. High school hierarchies are stubborn, and despite our best efforts, we often continue to feel their pull. True enough. Now, where do I log out?
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