Young Adult sees the reteaming of director Jason Reitman and and screenwriter Diablo Cody after their previous collaboration on Juno, which won Cody the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.
The film stars Charlize Theron as Mavis Gary, the author (more specifically, barely credited ghost-writer) of a (formerly) popular series young adult novels, who returns home to try and woo her (married) high school beau Buddy Slade (Patrick Wilson). All the while she tries to write to final book in the series, which probably takes a lot of inspiration from her life experiences.
Mavis is a very unlikable person trying to do a very despicable thing. She is constantly reminded of this fact by Matt (Patton Oswalt), another former acquaintance of Mavis, who also acts as her conscience. However, she is also borderline depressed with a growing alcohol problem and she is frequently shown using make-up and fancy clothes (including hair extensions) to hide the person she has truly become.
Overall, I would say that Young Adult is an intriguing character study and, while not entirely original, it is still enjoyable to watch. The film has a bit of an ambiguous ending that doesn't really leave the audience proper closure and causes us to wonder if Mavis truly learns anything over the course of the film. That little bit of nitpicking aside, I would say that it was overall a pretty decent film.
8/10
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