Young Adult (2011)

Written by CinemaSerf on February 24, 2023

The premiss is that Charlize Theron ("Mavis Gary") is an erstwhile successful novelist, now divorced, borderline alcoholic and bored. She heads back to her home town in Minnesota to catch up with her parents - and, more importantly, to hook up with her now married ex-boyfriend, who now has a baby... When she arrives, she initially meets up with the guy whom everyone thought was gay at school, and was (very) badly beaten up, who warns her off her intended - "Buddy Slade" (good looking, but wooden as a skateboard Patrick Wilson). To be honest, I found this quite a hard watch - Theron is so convincingly odious as to make me want to throttle her. Add to that the nauseatingly forgiving nature of the townsfolk whose lives she would willingly have wrecked and it made me even more annoyed! Not sure who this is actually for, this film, but it certainly wasn't for me... A thing of shallowness.