We meet her face-down, with remnants of the previous night glued to her sweatpants, blond tresses poking out in all directions, reality TV blaring through tinny speakers. Her room is a dump. Vodka bottle on the nightstand, detritus spilling precariously off her dresser; Tracey Emin would be proud. She twitches awake and immediately chugs from an oversized bottle of Diet Coke, each gulp thunderous.
This is Mavis Gary (Charlize Theron), a thirtysomething divorcee and former prom queen whose life hasn’t quite turned out the way she imagined. She was a knockout then and she’s a knockout now – only people don’t pay attention the way they used to. By day she’s a ghostwriter for a failing teen series called Waverley Prep (think Gossip Girl but snider). By night she dolls up for dates with insufferable, mealy mouthed chumps who gasbag about their philanthropic ventures as if they’re Gandhi reincarnated. It’s no wonder her face is etched into a permanent scowl of disgust. Where did it all go wrong?
The response to Jason Reitman’s film might have been tepidly favourable in 2011 but Young Adult has largely faded from critical attention in the intervening years. It’s probably remembered – if at all – as the film that ended Reitman’s winning streak. After the hat-trick which propelled him to widespread acclaim (Thank You ror Smoking, Juno, Up in the Air), Young Adult was largely seen as a minor effort – too flimsy, perhaps, or too cynical to make any lasting impression.
That might be true: Young Adult wields none of the genial grace of Reitman’s earlier work. But Mavis, a decade on, stands superior in the storied canon of unlikable protagonists. She is dourer than any girl on Girls, more conniving than any Gillian Flynn concoction. She is a black hole of empathy and dogged in her pursuit of utter havoc. She is a singular monster for whom no redemption awaits. “Thank you,” said Theron, accepting a career tribute award in 2011, “for letting me play such a bitch.”
The events of Young Adult – surly, farcical and often stomach-churning – are spurred by a janky inkjet printout of an email. Clutching the paper like an ancient scroll, Mavis eyes its contents again, then again. It’s an invitation to a baby shower – for Mavis’s old high school flame, Buddy Slade (Patrick Wilson, in full dad cosplay). “You seem a little worked up about this,” her friend deadpans over coffee and fries. “I am not worked up in the slightest!” she screams.
So begins her villain’s journey into Nowhere, America, whizzing through mega-highways back to the small town where she grew up – a place whose primary landmark is a combination KFC-Taco-Bell-Pizza-Hut (a “Ken-Taco-Hut,” she quips drily). This is 2011 but you wouldn’t know it from Mavis’s getup: giant sunglasses, Juicy Couture knockoffs and a tiny pooch on her arm; the pre-eminent sartorial choices from the last time she was queen bee.
She’s in town for just one purpose: to wrench an unassuming Buddy back into her clutches and away from his loving family. But there’s a spanner in the works: the awkward, schlubby Matt Freehauf (Patton Oswalt), who was apparently Mavis’s locker neighbour in high school (not that she remembers). Matt stymies her grand plan with annoying persistence; the pair make an unlikely duo, trading barbed retorts with equal and opposite misanthropy.
Things move slowly in this place. Eventually, all gives way to hurricane Mavis. Theron provides one of the great character performances of the 2010s as an overgrown mean girl whose sardonic jibes barely conceal a deep well of desperation – one that spurts out in a geyser of venom during a back yard broigus for the ages. Just one glance at her sneering glare could make its recipient die instantly.
Mavis is destructive, mercurial: a template of chaos that aligns squarely with her profession of choice. You might forget, through it all, that she’s an author; so would she. Really, she’s a writer in the truest sense – in that she loves to write two sentences then immediately check her emails. Mavis ignores calls from her editor hounding her for an extremely late manuscript; she tears her hair out in clumps, trying – and failing – to finish her draft. It’s no wonder she’s so abrasive. Mavis Gary, I get it.
Young Adult is available to stream on Stan. For more recommendations of what to stream in Australia, click here
