Young Adults
Young Adults refers to a genre of fiction whose target audience is its moniker - can you say Twilight? Ironically Elizabeth Reaser, one of the lesser stars of that blockbuster franchise (where she’s Esme Cullen) is Beth Slade here, a principal character although not as the protagonist but very much so as the antagonist. The person she's antagonizing is Mavis Gary (Charlize Theron) because Beth had the audacity to marry Mavis’ high school sweetheart Buddy Slade (gifted man Patrick Wilson). Curiously Mavis receives an email regarding Beth and Buddy’s first born right about that time her creativity and bourbon are hitting rock bottom. Deluded that she and Buddy are destined to be together she leaves Minneapolis with its incessant publisher pressure and heads back to her small hometown of Mercury to reclaim her man. Holed up in a motor hotel (one of the town’s ubiquitous franchises) along with her neglected dog and diet coke hangover medicine Mavis puts her plan into action. She thinks it’s going well despite the council of Matt Freehauf (Patton Oswalt) her geeky high school locker neighbour who she never acknowledged as a teen but who turns out to be the only one in town with any real affection for her. And her parents Hedda and David (Jill Eikenberry and Richard Bekins) still live there! How can this ever be resolved? Well thanks to the superb writing of Diablo Cody we walk away fairly satisfied, even though this amusing effort is no Juno (one of Cody’s previous triumphs). And thanks to the inspired work of Theron we’re also satisfied that the train wreck known as Mavis Gary has no business influencing the minds of young adults.