5 Things about Young Adult

I'm stealing this format from Eugene Ahn (aka Adam Warrock, the #7 standout Nerd of 2011) because it frees me from feeling like I have to make the definitive statement about whatever movie I'm writing about. With that monkey off my back I should hopefully write more frequently. Also, there are minor spoilers ahead.

1. I liked this movie. I'm not sure how much yet though. It was very uneven and I felt like it dragged a little in the middle but by the end it totally won me over. I would definitely recommend it. Hell, I'd see it again just to try and parse out my feelings over it.

2. Though this was written by Diablo Cody, it is not Juno. It's much darker, less quirky and the protagonist is also the villain. Well... kind of. It's not that black and white, and that is one of the things I really loved about this movie. I know that by the end (spoiler alert) Mavis was able to shed the weight of her past and start on her way to allowing herself to be happy. But the way she did it heightened the "fuck these people I'm better than everyone" mentality that I thought was a pretty severe character flaw. But then again maybe that's what you have to do to move past caring about being judged and defining yourself by how others see you. Haven't totally figured that one out yet.

3. Patton Oswalt's performance as Matt, a nerdy guy who was crippled in high school when "The Jocks" beat him with a lead pipe because they thought he was gay, was excellent. He wasn't exactly out of his comfort zone playing a smartass nerd, but all the best scenes in the movie (with one notable exception) had him in it. He had the perfect balance of sarcasm, morality and fuck-it-all attitude and often served to call out just how crazy Charlize Theron's character was being. I am actually going to go watch "Big Fan" right now on the strength of his performance.

4. The last 20-30 minutes of Young Adult were near perfect. The movie had felt like it was meandering and I was not clear on where it was going. To that point my opinion of the movie was Patton Oswalt is excellent, but the rest was kind of "meh." I think this is largely because any story having to do with splitting up a relationship makes me irrationally uncomfortable. But from the points Mavis walks out the front door of Buddy's baby's naming ceremony onward, the movie is perfect. Mavis grows in a way that is positive, but not "uplifting" in a way that would betray the character. Her rant on the front lawn, her scene with Matt, her conversation with Matt's sister are all spot on, well written and terrifically acted. Things are resolved but not everything. Just like in real life.

5. There were moments of this movie that I genuinely connected with and not always in a pleasant way. A saw a lot of pieces of myself that I'm not particularly proud of reflected in Marvin's behavior when she was at her worst. The scene where she is totally losing it on the front lawn had some lines I could see myself saying and that's not a good thing. The hug between Marvin and Matt towards the end of the film captured how I felt when my high school girlfriend and I started dating- I was convinced I was hideous and had no earthly idea what she was doing with me. I was being unfair to myself at the time, but the contrast between Matt's broken short body and Marvin's model physique, and their emotional states at that moment, brought back that feeling so strongly. The themes in this movie are probably universal- the weight of nostalgia and history, dealing with personal tragedy, the incongruity between how someone sees themselves and how others view them- but there were moments in that film where I felt like Diablo Cody had plucked things directly out of my brain.