To say that Mavis Gary (Charlize Theron) is a bit of a mess would be putting it very mildly. The 37-year-old divorcee and Young Adult protagonist is an alcoholic, a ghostwriter of a series of YA books soon to be discontinued, and a reality TV and nostalgia addict. An e-mail sent by Buddy (Patrick Wilson) — her ex-boyfriend from many years ago — containing a picture of his newborn baby should indicate that any chance of rekindling their relationship is dead in the water, but instead, Mavis takes this as a sign to return to her hometown that she thoroughly despises to make a desperate bid to get back together with him.
On the drive there she obsessively listens to ‘their’ song, “The Concept” by Teenage Fanclub. Since Mavis is set up as an impressively dislikeable character, one would expect a godawful, generic pop song about chasing one’s dreams to play out as her anthem. Instead, “The Concept” contains a male vocalist crooning for a woman he should have treated better and likely can no longer attain (hence the refrain of ‘I didn’t want to hurt you)’, interspersed amidst simple descriptions of her pretty banal actions. The intention is clear: this unnamed woman can make the simplest of gestures transcendent. Mavis doesn’t find fulfillment in upbeat songs about women fulfilling their dreams, but in a man desperately pining for a woman whose very essence is indescribable.
This protagonist envisions herself as a concept of beauty instead of a real person so that she can live up to her ‘peak’, her oft-mentioned high school self. When the song runs out of lyrics towards its back end, she restarts it, repeating this process again and again. Mavis’ problems are written plainly in this opening credits scene, as she tries to rewind the past to continue channeling her delusional wish fulfillment.
It’s wonderful to see just how committed writer Diablo Cody, director Jason Reitman, and Theron are to revealing all of this character’s imperfections. Whether it’s watching Mavis chug Diet Coke almost every morning after waking, getting blackout drunk to mask the pain of only being able to find happiness through an impossible dream, or cruelly taking down the people around her when they’re out of earshot, it is a truly delightful experience to watch this character’s total lack of inhibition.
Oh, and her quest to seduce a married man with a baby, often in front of Buddy’s wife. Mavis’ intentions can’t stay hidden for very long; whenever she hugs Buddy, she leans in too close, holds on for too long, and smiles just a little too brightly. It’s simply a matter of waiting for the pin to drop for her old flame and everyone else around them. This results in some spectacularly, painfully cringe-worthy scenes, made all the more potent because you keep expecting it to get even worse in this regard. And it does.
There’s hope for Mavis yet in her alcohol-tinged conversations and late-night hangouts with Matt Freehauf (Patton Oswalt), who became disabled after being brutally beaten for being gay (despite not being gay) in high school. Matt is the voice of reason, so it is only fitting that in this horrifically cynical world he still bears scars from the past. There is a part of him that genuinely can’t move on from his high school days, since that was when his life changed forever, with reminders of that awful time appearing whenever he thinks of his disability.
Matt’s interactions with Mavis are highly entertaining, even if his role as a conduit for the audience is a bit too obvious, like the curtain is being pulled back from all this nastiness so Cody and Reitman can nudge viewers with this dose of reality. It’s not entirely necessary, given how transparently delusional Mavis is and how so much of the movie’s qualities come from her derangement. Still, Matt is an entertaining proponent of reason even as his inclusion injects a complimentary dose of pathos to this story.
Mavis is hateable in the most transparent and gleeful of ways, but more often than not she’s very easy to pity. A sad-sack who peaked in high school and can’t stop looking back to that time as a remedy for how much she despises her life, all of her attitudes, actions, and coping mechanisms are totally counter-intuitive to a productive, happy life. Mavis does have awful qualities, and there are times when she is truly unbearable (her neglect towards her dog is so pronounced that viewers will expect that one of this movie’s bitter punchlines is her accidentally letting it starve to death), but on the whole her life is too sad for mockery.
To watch this movie is to wait with bated breath for an inevitable mental breakdown that’ll have you viewing the movie with your open palms over your eyes as you peek at the screen through the gaps in your fingers, so pronounced is the cringe factor here. This scene in question is delightful, until it’s not, and the sadness at the heart of this character’s identity becomes a harder pill to swallow than the cynically-depicted delusions she is wrapped up in.
Theron approaches this material with absolute fearlessness, never once trying to make it feel as though Mavis is on in the sad, cringy joke that is her life. Young Adult, for all its bitterness, also doesn’t let its cynicism override its emotional beats. It ends exactly as viewers should have expected, but the ride is so turbulent and pitch-black in its dark comedy that the story feels unpredictable all the same. Remarkably, these characters all feel like real people. A conversation with Mavis’ parents shows how they are neglectful and dismissive in just the right ways to have molded this very unique human being we see today, but they never come across as monsters. It’s this film’s humanity that’s actually its saddest quality. While the sum of its parts doesn’t result in a truly brilliant piece of cinema, Young Adult is very funny, brilliantly acted, and uncomfortably honest.