Young Adult

First of all let me establish that I really liked this movie. It was well-written, well acted and was somehow just really profound for me. But I know that many will be disappointed by it and some will probably even hate it.
Most of all it's because Jason Reitman and Diablo Cody are the team that brought us Juno. Reitman was nominated for an Oscar for that film and Cody won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. cody went on to dabble in horror comedy writing Jennifer's Body and also the acclaimed series The United States of Tara.  Juno dealt with having to grow up, finding your first love and all the trials and tribulations of life and highschool. Young Adult deals with the same sort of issues but in a decontructed, less sweet way. In this film there is no Kimya Dawson, the cute as a button presence that is Ellen Paige is replaced by a very tired looking, bitchy Charlize Theron and while it was endearing to see a youthful Juno having to grow up all of a sudden its  a bit different seeing a 37 year old woman still stuck in a highschool mindset.

In Young Adult, Charlize plays Mavis Gray, a ghost-writer for a series of teen novels called Waverly High that is soon going to be cancelled. After her divorce she has an epiphany and decides to go back to her hometown to reclaim the 'love of her life' Buddy Slade (played by Patrick Wilson) who is both happily married and a new dad. I was never a huge Charlize Theron fan but in this film she is incredible. I think it must be one of the most difficult things to play a completely unlikeable character but she does it so well. Mavis Gray is a shallow, drunk, purposeless woman living in the shadow of her highschool days. The film is so subtle in its exploration of this character. We see her nervousness and anxiety when she keeps picking at her hair, yet ironically she won 'best hair' in highschool. There are hilarious moments in the film which is evidence of Charlize's excellent comic timing.
The film is written really well because its both funny and tragic. Like The Descendants it makes use of that border between comedy and drama. As Mavis goes on her own personal journey she is also writing the final book in the series of Waverly High so we see how her reality is translated into fiction but also how she blurs the lines of what is real-life and what only happens in the movies. At one point Mavis shouts out to an old classmate who's trying to convince her not to go through with her plan to break up Buddy Slade's marriage, "Don't you know love conquers all?!!!" Her naivety is indicitive of her limbo-like state of maturity.

You're either going to love Young Adult or hate it. Personally I thought it was awesome.