Tired Girls

Young Adult (2011) Review

Living can be a huge drag. God knows I agree more with this statement now than ever. I feel like a tired girl.

But the simplest reliefs, like seeing a movie character in an equally difficult situation, do make things better. Naturally, I have a profound adoration for films about modern day girls going through a hard time (a la Tiny Furniture, I would say). These films are born from the sentiments of a "chick flick", but transmutated into "chick lethargic". I am referring specifically to films centered on a single, disillusioned female character who is suffering from a general crisis in her ordinary life. Most common predicaments include alienation from family and friends, depleted career, lack of inspiration, and lost love.

In the theater last night, my mind found gentle solace in the life of a tired girl, Mavis Gary, the 37-year-old train wreck in Diablo Cody and Jason Reitman's new flick, Young Adult. Played by Charlize Theron, Gary is a divorced teen fiction writer whose life is sputtering out. Upon receiving an unexpected invitation to a baby shower from her now married high school sweetheart, Buddy Slade (Patrick Wilson), she leaves the city on a whim to return to her hometown. We follow Gary through her obsessive quest to rekindle her relationship with Buddy. Along the way, she forms an unlikely bond with Matt Freehauf (Patton Oswalt), an eccentric man known to her as the geeky victim of a hate crime back in high school.

Aside from a relatively bland ending, the film conscientiously portrays the choas of a young girl inside a jaded woman, and her graduation from adolescence. It has all the right laughs in the right spots, while retaining a staggering somberness. Charlize Theron is consistently marvelous in her alcoholic antics, stubborn naivete, and overall dispirited stupor. Also, no matter how much horrifying junk food it is implied that she is eating in this film, she still has the body of of a kickboxer.

Once gain, Cody and Reitman deserve big, wholesome hugs. I needed something like this to remind me that Bridesmaids is a dumb movie and watching it three times in the theaters is nothing to boast about.