Depending on who you ask, Juno was either a breath of fresh air or a case study in late 2000s pseudo-indie ostentation—more interested in congratulating itself for its own hipness than telling a satisfying story. It rocketed screenwriter Diablo Cody into the spotlight (indeed, it's one of those rare cases of the screenwriter being treated and accepted as an auteur), but it also earned its share of scorn along the way. The debate has died down, and seen after the fact, it becomes clearer than ever that the underrated strength of that film was always the Jennifer Garner-Jason Bateman subplot; the pregnant teenager angle may have been safe and pandering, but it was when Cody turned her attention to Gen Xers grappling with adulthood that the story found its most sincere emotion. So with the sudden arrival of Young Adult, I was curious to see how she’d do if she placed those Gen Xers front and center.
The story centers on Mavis (Charlize Theron), a dissatisfied hack writer pining for her glory days as a popular high school student. When her old boyfriend announces that he and his wife have had a kid, she heads back to her hometown with a deluded plan to "get him back." Reuniting Cody with Juno director Jason Reitman, the film largely swaps the colorful cuteness of an indie comedy for the muted palette and dour rhythm of an indie drama; anyone hoping for (or worried about) an excess of hip dialogue will be surprised how relatively little dialogue there is at all. Mavis herself is a fascinating trainwreck, a character who’s magnetically, almost irredeemably unlikable, making the film the sort of character study that dares the audience not to flinch.
That having been said, the writing is often too clunky to carry the weight of raw realism, so the film comes across less as an adult drama than an awkward imitation of one, like Cody is throwing serious issues (disabilities, failed marriage, hate crimes, miscarriages) at the screen and hoping that some of them stick. Some do, but the result is an oddly tactless film that’s as manipulative in its darkness as Juno was in its lightness. Of Reitman’s films, this is the first to not tack on a happy coda, but it's also his least smooth or satisfying. Credit must go to Charlize Theron and Patton Oswalt, who knock their big scenes out of the park, and while Cody is definitely better as a wit than as a dramatist, I can’t deny that she has what they call “a voice.” My best wishes to Fox Searchlight for the uphill battle in marketing this as a fun movie (the David Bowie song in the commercial helps).
One small issue: the male love interest is incredibly bland and uninteresting. But male writers have been doing that to female characters for years, so I suppose it serves us right.
2 out of 5 stars.
************
Young Adult is out this week on DVD from Paramount
No comments:
Post a Comment