Young Adult

I admire Charlize Theron. She's undeniably and once-in-a-generation gorgeous, but she doesn't rest on her laurels and make a bunch of Jennifer Aniston or Katherine Heigl-like movies (One could say Katherine Heigl is Charlize Theron without the talent and charm, but I don't want to end up Santa's naughty list). Theron takes chances, and those chances pay off in Young Adult.

Theron stars as Mavis - the former prom queen who got out of her small town, but decides to head back as life starts to fall apart. She has gotten divorced, her long running job writing a teen book series has ended, and drinking seems to be the one task she is good at. Angry, confused and looking for some shred of her former glory, Mavis decides to go back to Mercury, MN and chase down her high school boyfriend, Buddy (Patrick Wilson). Of course, he's married and just had a baby.

How disastrous will this be, since it can only end in disaster?

I could feel many of you recoiling when I said Mavis was chasing after a married guy with a kid (since people who look like Theron often are successful at that sort of pursuit). However, director Jason Reitman and writer Diablo Cody (the team behind Juno) make it abundantly clear from the beginning, this will be a failed journey, which is where the laughter and heartbreak come from.

Theron is amazingly, absolutely fabulous in Young Adult. She makes you feel the character's angst, pain and utter narcissism in ways that have you constantly reevaluating her and the situation, especially as she makes all of the wrong decisions. However, because of Theron, the audience doesn't root for her failure.

The audience gets to laugh at her when she makes the kind of smart aleck comments we often only think to ourselves in the deep, dark recesses of our minds (and don't speak because we have a sense of courtesy and civility), but we also feel sadness for her as she tries to open up to her family and heads off to make the big speech that won't win the day, and even she kind of knows it down deep inside. She might not be the nicest character on a movie screen, but we do sense a bit of honesty, which gives us the clear picture of who Mavis is deep down inside.

Surprisingly, Young Adult is fantastic thanks to the chemistry between Theron and co-star Patton Oswalt (most of you know him as the voice of Ratatouille, or that guy from King of Queens). Oswalt grips your heart as the guy, Matt, who had the locker next to Mavis's during high school, only to be overlooked and forgotten over the years. The subject of a hate crime in high school, which has affected him for life, Matt serves as Mavis's confidante and moral compass, but he brings something a bit more to it all.

It would be easy to play the character as morally outraged or seeking some sort of comeuppance for the beautiful girl who treated everyone so shabbily, but Cody and Oswalt make Matt more sympathetic towards Mavis, kind of like the audience feels. You can almost hear him thinking about how sad it is she and he have fallen to the same level, and we see that kinship develop on screen in funny and touching ways.

Young Adult is one of my favorite movies of the year, and a reminder Cody and Reitman are a potent team.

Young Adult is rated R for language and some sexual content.