Young Adult

Take a trip to the cinema these days and you will most likely encounter an advert where Ray Winstone will wander up down a cinema listing, in his own inimitable delivery, why he enjoys a trip to the cinema before declaring, with pause for dramatic effect, that he goes to the cinema for “the experience”.

That “experience”, in Cineworld Glasgow at any rate, will regularly involve being disturbed by people chatting and playing with their mobile phone. No number of inane ‘adverts’ from Orange will persuade people to switch their phones off for the duration of a film. My suggestion that those who insist of checking their facebook status while in the cinema should receive a poke from a high voltage cattle prod has so far fallen on deaf ears. I do, however, continue to live in hope.

A knowledgeable, appreciative audience can enhance the cinema experience.  Not a sound could be heard, to site an example, during the powerful adaptation of Lionel Shiver’s novel ‘We Need to Talk About Kevin’.

Alas that wasn’t the case at yesterday evening’s screening of ‘Young Adult’ at the aforementioned Cineworld. Whether the audience were expecting something in the ilk of ‘Bad Teacher’ I don’t know, but this film seemed to go over the heads of the vast majority of them. The result was that it didn’t  hold their attention and played to almost constant low level, but annoyingly audible, babble.

That was a shame as this was a film that deserved better. Charlize Theron gives an excellent performance as Mavis Gary the ghost writer of a series of books aimed at the Young Adult market. With a failed marriage behind her, a drink problem and a bad case of writers block she receives an e-mail from her High School sweetheart, Buddy played by Patrick Wilson, announcing the birth of his baby son. In attempt to recapture what she perceives as her glory years she returns from the big city, in this case Minneapolis, to her small time home town with the avowed aim of winning Buddy back.  

On arriving home she encounters High School contemporary, although she barely noticed him, Matt Freehauf (Patton Oswalt) a “fat geek” who was beaten so badly by at High School by some jocks who, mistakenly, believed he was gay that he was left crippled.

As good as Theron’s performance is, in my opinion it is Oswalt, a leading US stand- up comedian, that steals the show here.

This dark comedy, more ‘feel bad’ than ‘feel good’, explores the impact your school years, in particular those immediately before adulthood, can shape your life. Mavis and Matt form an unlikely friendship. Or perhaps, given that both have, for entirely different reasons, been unable to escape from their adolescent years, not quite so unlikely. Mavis, made bitter by life’s disappointments, yearns for the return of her youth while Matt’s injuries seem as much mental as they are physical.

The humour in this film is often uncomfortable and while you won’t leave the cinema with your mood lightened do go and see it if you get the chance. Don't forget your cattle prod.