You Should See Young Adult This Weekend

There was a marked lack of strife in the Papageorgiou household during Christmas this year, which is odd, because we are a bunch of excitable Greek savages who scream for sport and, during the holidays, even icy-hearted WASPs manage to lock their flaxen horns whilst sipping their scotch or whatever it is that actual white people do. The day’s highlight was a viewing of Young Adult, which won out as the family choice of films choice because what the Hell else were we going to watch? We Bought a Zoo? That feel-good pablum is PG, which meant that ScarJo’s areolas were going to stay in their cage. You can’t fool me that easily, Cameron Crowe.

Young Adult stars Charlize Theron as Mavis Gary, a writer of young-adult fiction who decides to leave her Minneapolis home and return to the small town where she lived out her popular teenage years in order to win back her now-happily married high school sweetheart. If that premise sounds like a clusterfuck waiting to happen, that’s because it is. As Mavis’ efforts grow increasingly desperate, she begins to forge a fascinating relationship with Matt Freehauf (Patton Oswalt), a former classmate and underachieving nerd who has also failed to escape the spectre of high school, albeit for different reasons.

I fell utterly in love with Charlize’s character, the flawless blonde prom queen who’s grown up to reveal both artistic talent and a few screws loose. What guy wouldn’t want Zelda Fitzgerald’s mind inside Cindy Crawford’s body? It’d be a roller coaster of great sex, uncontrollable sobbing and waking up with a gun to your head like Henry Hill. Sign this man up. Up until now, I’d really only seen Charlize in The Devil’s Advocate and, while I thought she did a great job, I attributed most of that to acting opposite Keanu Reeves, who could make Stephen Hawking seem emotive by comparison. Charlize has made a fan of me, and I intend to watch her in every movie in which she’s pretty (so fuck off, Monster.)

The rest of Young Adult works because Patton Oswalt is as fantastically at-home in the role of an alcoholic geek as you’d expect him to be and, Christ help me for saying this, but Diablo Cody’s script is very well done. Yes, Patton’s character is obviously just Miss Cody with a penis, much like Juno was Diablo inside the body of a 10-year-old boy, but, as any great lover knows, you keep doing your best move over and over until your partner vomits at the mere thought of your naked body. And, Diablo, I haven’t felt the need to fake one and roll over quite yet.

For those of you that have New Year’s Eve plans, well, la-di-da, aren’t you just massa of Cool Kid Plantation? For the rest of us, feel no shame in eating half of a pizza alone then going out to watch Young Adult. Or feel shame, then drink afterward until you don’t. As Ted Bundy once said, “Whatever gets your rocks off.”

Tagged as: review, Young Adult.