YOUNG ADULT
I first came across the story of Mavis Gray
during year twelve as we were studying Hamlet, which if you study Hamlet is a
character study of Hamlet and his world, which was interesting because what I
saw straight away was that Young Adult is also a pure character study of Mavis
Gray and a world, a past, she cannot move away from: her highs school years and
blunders, when was famous. The main thing reviewers and other analysts will
tell you about Young Adult is “they had to be brave” because this is not an
easy movie to pull off. In music there are albums called “Concept Albums” when
artists tell you this it generally means this is something “We don’t if anyone
would like yet”, that they’re trying to experiment with new things so that they
could possibly take the genre to a higher plane than it is in currently; in a
way Young Adult is a “Concept Movie” as it tries to experiment with its script
and overall production to express itself in a unique. And what Young Adult
expresses is a character study that if you look closely enough asks you about
change and how we really deal with it.
Young Adult is the second collaboration
between Jason Reitman (Up in the Air, Thank you for smoking) and Diablo Cody
(United State of Tara) since the critically-acclaimed-smash-hit Juno (2007),
which earned Cody the Oscar for best original screenplay. The story focuses on
Mavis Gray, an interesting thing about her is that she expands an interesting
concept that Juno played around with the character of Mark of the “forever
child” a concept that very simply put defines a character/person inextricably
stuck in the past and unable to move on in their life. That’s what Mavis is
she’s on the wrong side of thirty, divorced and living out a mediocre career;
Mavis live her best years in high-school and thus she is quite inextricably
stuck in this high school world unable to move on in her life. The story follow
Mavis as she confronts her life as it has been going and as it is and through
her interactions with her old High School peers (Buddy Slade, Matt Freehauf) we
learn about the flaws: that her alcoholism is crippling her, that she treats
people terrible, we learn how terrible of a person she has become and
eventually we feel that she does too.
And when we almost thought everything is going to work out for Mavis and
she’s going to change, the movie does its most important move, in a very
thought provoking “kitchen scene” a conversation with a Matt Freehauf’s sister,
a woman that has idealized her since high school idealized her for five minutes
and undoes the progress that had taken the entire movie. In an outstanding and
brave move Young Adult undoes the journey that we have become so invested to
perhaps comment on how Holly Wood has made us expect in real life of how
everything changes in real life and life gets better but in reality we watch a
documentary on animal cruelty and be vegan for a week then quit.
The main character, Mavis Gray, is masterfully
acted by Charlize Theron (Chocolat, Monster) and Matt Freehauf (Patton Oswalt)
provides the perfect comedy relief. This is a movie that will give you a master
class exhibition in acting and teach you something about change, making you
laugh then make uncomfortable and think at the same time.
5 out of 5 stars
Rotten Tomatoes 80%
Metacritic 71%
TRAILER
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