YOUNG ADULT

This movie is a black comedy, a satire, a comment about single life and making it on your own and feeling fulfilled, about friendships and about loneliness. And all of this is put together with great whip smart dialogue and a brisk running time of about 90 minutes and terrific acting by charlize theron, Patton Oswalt and Patrick Wilson.

Charlize is Mavis, a disorganized and aimless ghost writer of books who drinks her way through encounters with men; her unhappiness is poignantly revealed by brief shots of her pulling out her hair in tiny patches. When she finds out that her high school beau, Buddy, is celebrating the birth of his child she fantasizes about going back to Mercury, the small town she grew up in, (she now lives in Minneapolis) and rescuing Buddy from his rigid and constrained husband and father role so they can pick up where their romance ended.

This sounds like a stupid plot but Theron's acting is so believable and authentic that I really liked her and cared about her and could empathize  with her acerbic comments and her rudeness and her sadness and her disconnect from other people and her huge sense of inadequacy which came out in cutting often cruel remarks, Some of the best lobbed at Beth, Buddy's wife. Some scenes were uncomfortable to watch, in fact.

Anyway, so the story line is watching this disaster production titled Mavis try to win Buddy back in spite of the fact that he's happily married. Patton Oswalt is a guy who had the locker right next to hers all through high school and she accidentally meets him in a bar but can't remember him till she sees his cane and realizes he's the "hate crime guy". evidently in high school he was beaten up by some jocks who said he was homosexual and the fact that the small town of Mercury still believes he's gay  (he's not) and the fact that his mobility is severely compromised from the beating means that he is also an outsider and not part of the social life of town.

He spends his days painting action figures and running a distillery in his garage.

One of the final scenes in which Mavis psychologically crumbles during Buddys' baby's naming party and lashes out at people is cringingly wonderful.

I gave this movie a 9 and Bill gave it an 8.