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Young Adult (2011) - Reitman
Put on the red dress
The set-up? Mavis Gary (Charlize Theron) receives a blanket e-mail announcing the birth of a bouncing baby girl. She begins to fixate and obsess on it until she gradually perceives a subliminal SOS from her former high school sweet heart: He wants her to save him. She packs a suitcase and sets off to her home town to wreck a marriage.
Ouch. This woman is literally without: talk about setting improbable, hopeless goals for yourself. The only real suspense here is just how big of a face plant and splat is she going to make.
Dislikes? The time line seems a bit off. For a small town, a couple having their first kid in their late thirties seems really late: all the couples around them would have had a passel of teenagers by that time. Mavis wanting to relive some of her golden high school days also seems to be a little to the party.
The film lacks an awareness. Mavis drives around her home town noting the changes. She sneers at the latest fast food innovations, unfortunately, the levels of marketing sophistication and strategies almost operate on a subliminal level in the big city. Making her---if you think about it---more of a rube than these so called small town hicks who have actually got it right. The film makers seem to be unaware that she's a perfect little consumer drone. She's got a lot of disposable income. The clutter of her life defines her, but beyond that she has no real identity. The cherry on top of all that is that Mavis provides ghost written material for a more famous (brand name) author.
Reitman also stumbles badly by framing this selfishness as a personal defect of Mavis and not providing the audience with enough links to the larger world of instant gratification and greed that is a common side effect of a consumer society. The film is tellingly overwrought with product placement. You got problems in your life? Upgrade to a better one. Or better yet, trash the old clunker and buy a brand new one. The greatest dangers of mindless consumption is not just an overload of fake calories, but pre-fabricated lifestyles that fit comfortably (and are originated) into long range corporate planning schemes; emotional placebos and empty dreams purchased at the local dollar store that eventually kill the soul. In that world, the casual whoring of the Kardashians is the height of success and a legitimate life style.
That said, I'll definitely watch it this again whenever it reappears. I tend scratch my head with someone espouses great love for a film with a male character that is so complete a skunk; someone so nasty and destructive that no one in their right mind would allow such a person to be in your life for a couple of hours, let alone a couple of days. But I think I understand that better now. Mavis is egocentric and cruel. Wonderfully insincere. A little hellacious; she's an obvious train wreck but oh so, adorable and I like her (well ... okay, maybe the drop dead gorgeous actress who plays her).
Theron is just so compulsively watchable. The film even plays into this by contrasting scenes with her, shall we say "small town" face with it's all it's normal imperfections with her thick movie star "beauty mask". Theron reveals here, she's actually got two or three separate looks. I also noticed there's a slight mellifluent aging of her voice, which has become a little raspy.
The gravitational pull of Theron forces the other actors to circle around her performance. The only actor in the film who competes with her is Patton Oswald, who also plays another character unhealthily anchored in that same time period. He's the only one who tells her to her face that she's utterly insane. She just shakes her head and takes another swig. Though years later, this invisible nerd is still getting a little contact high from actually conversing with the ice queen.
The main shortcoming of the film is, it appears to be a beguiling fragment that seems to have fallen from a larger and more intriguing story. Mavis is a budding dipsomaniac. She collapses face first onto her bed dead to the world every night and reawakens in the same position, then undresses for the morning.
The dramatic high point in this film is a glass of red wine and a silk dress but it's not the dramatic heights (or lows) for this lady. Not by a long shot. Mavis drives drunk all the time and so far has managed not to kill anyone ... yet. She still has a lot more of these little "episodes" to trouble through before she hits rock bottom. Unfortunately for Mavis, she may well be the original blockbuster: the line of drooling, horny enablers willing to hold her hair every night while she pukes in an alleyway, and generally assist in the continuing tumble and downward spiral of her life would coil around the block several times. Which sets up a much more interesting and fearful question: would this woman ever hit rock bottom, and if so, would she realize it?
Young Adult (2011) - Reitman
Put on the red dress
The set-up? Mavis Gary (Charlize Theron) receives a blanket e-mail announcing the birth of a bouncing baby girl. She begins to fixate and obsess on it until she gradually perceives a subliminal SOS from her former high school sweet heart: He wants her to save him. She packs a suitcase and sets off to her home town to wreck a marriage.
Ouch. This woman is literally without: talk about setting improbable, hopeless goals for yourself. The only real suspense here is just how big of a face plant and splat is she going to make.
Dislikes? The time line seems a bit off. For a small town, a couple having their first kid in their late thirties seems really late: all the couples around them would have had a passel of teenagers by that time. Mavis wanting to relive some of her golden high school days also seems to be a little to the party.
The film lacks an awareness. Mavis drives around her home town noting the changes. She sneers at the latest fast food innovations, unfortunately, the levels of marketing sophistication and strategies almost operate on a subliminal level in the big city. Making her---if you think about it---more of a rube than these so called small town hicks who have actually got it right. The film makers seem to be unaware that she's a perfect little consumer drone. She's got a lot of disposable income. The clutter of her life defines her, but beyond that she has no real identity. The cherry on top of all that is that Mavis provides ghost written material for a more famous (brand name) author.
Reitman also stumbles badly by framing this selfishness as a personal defect of Mavis and not providing the audience with enough links to the larger world of instant gratification and greed that is a common side effect of a consumer society. The film is tellingly overwrought with product placement. You got problems in your life? Upgrade to a better one. Or better yet, trash the old clunker and buy a brand new one. The greatest dangers of mindless consumption is not just an overload of fake calories, but pre-fabricated lifestyles that fit comfortably (and are originated) into long range corporate planning schemes; emotional placebos and empty dreams purchased at the local dollar store that eventually kill the soul. In that world, the casual whoring of the Kardashians is the height of success and a legitimate life style.
That said, I'll definitely watch it this again whenever it reappears. I tend scratch my head with someone espouses great love for a film with a male character that is so complete a skunk; someone so nasty and destructive that no one in their right mind would allow such a person to be in your life for a couple of hours, let alone a couple of days. But I think I understand that better now. Mavis is egocentric and cruel. Wonderfully insincere. A little hellacious; she's an obvious train wreck but oh so, adorable and I like her (well ... okay, maybe the drop dead gorgeous actress who plays her).
Theron is just so compulsively watchable. The film even plays into this by contrasting scenes with her, shall we say "small town" face with it's all it's normal imperfections with her thick movie star "beauty mask". Theron reveals here, she's actually got two or three separate looks. I also noticed there's a slight mellifluent aging of her voice, which has become a little raspy.
The gravitational pull of Theron forces the other actors to circle around her performance. The only actor in the film who competes with her is Patton Oswald, who also plays another character unhealthily anchored in that same time period. He's the only one who tells her to her face that she's utterly insane. She just shakes her head and takes another swig. Though years later, this invisible nerd is still getting a little contact high from actually conversing with the ice queen.
The main shortcoming of the film is, it appears to be a beguiling fragment that seems to have fallen from a larger and more intriguing story. Mavis is a budding dipsomaniac. She collapses face first onto her bed dead to the world every night and reawakens in the same position, then undresses for the morning.
The dramatic high point in this film is a glass of red wine and a silk dress but it's not the dramatic heights (or lows) for this lady. Not by a long shot. Mavis drives drunk all the time and so far has managed not to kill anyone ... yet. She still has a lot more of these little "episodes" to trouble through before she hits rock bottom. Unfortunately for Mavis, she may well be the original blockbuster: the line of drooling, horny enablers willing to hold her hair every night while she pukes in an alleyway, and generally assist in the continuing tumble and downward spiral of her life would coil around the block several times. Which sets up a much more interesting and fearful question: would this woman ever hit rock bottom, and if so, would she realize it?