Friday 10 February 2012

Young Adult

Jason Reitman has finally misfired with his fourth film, Young Adult.

And it was all going so well. Thank You For Smoking was a sharply-scripted, crowd-pleasing debut. This was followed by Juno, a hugely-popular indie which won Diablo Cody the Oscar for Original Screenplay. And then Reitman hit his stride with Up In The Air, bagging an A-list leading man and reaping Oscar nominations in multiple categories, including Best Film and Best Director for Reitman himself.

It is therefore a crushing shame that Reitman fails to deliver with Young Adult. With Reitman at the helm and Cody holding the pen, this was the long-awaited reunion of the Juno duo (Juo?). It should have been dynamite. The plot is stacked with potential: Charlize Theron's Mavis - once crowned prom queen and now a writer of teen novels through which she relives her high school years - learns that her high school boyfriend is married with a newly-born baby so she returns to her hometown in order to steal him away. It is a great concept and one which should generate a lot of carefully-observed, witty humour. Unfortunately, all of the best gags, if not the only gags, are used in the trailer.

The whole film lacks the energy of Reitman's earlier creations. The pre-credits sequence is tortuously slow and the film never really gets going thereafter. The credits themselves are literally start-and-stop, as Mavis continuously rewinds the same thirty seconds of cassette music, which funnily enough sets the pace for the following 90 minutes. Every so often, there will be a glimpse of Cody's sharp writing (Mos Eisley moonshine!) or Reitman's prowess behind the lens but it soon fades back into the plodding tone of the movie.

Considering this is Reitman's shortest movie, the time really drags. Scenes of dialogue are few and far between, separated by huge amounts of padding: makeover montages, lingering shots of hotel rooms and we are even shown the entire saga of Mavis printing an invitation from her computer. Thanks for that. With so much filler, Reitman and Cody appear to be dawdling. It would have been better to pad the film out with additional characters (only two of them are fully-fleshed out and given anything interesting to do) or throw a few curve-balls into the plot.

Young Adult also ends on morally-shaky ground. The moral of the story seems to be that small folk from small towns with simple lives don't actually matter. Meanwhile, the girl with mental-health problems runs back to the big city to carry on as she pleases. And Mavis' old flame, after sharing a snog with Mavis, never gets called on it. He is married with a daughter but is given no reprimand and even has the audacity to judge Mavis in the end.

The good news is that Charlize Theron and Patton Oswalt (the rat from Ratatouille!) are great as the two leads, the former dwelling on past highs and the latter dwelling on past lows. Their scenes together prevent the film from being a total write-off, with Theron utilising her underused comedy skills - perfected in the third season of Arrested Development - and Oswalt's fantastic voice delivering deadpan honesty throughout.

But ultimately, Young Adult is a disappointment. A potentially good idea is underdeveloped and the laziness of those involved is felt throughout, as if they grew as bored with their project as no doubt their audiences will. You really would expect better from an Oscar-nominated director and an Oscar-winning writer. A shame.

★★

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