Robert F. Funke

I saw Young Adult. Great movie. Not perfect—it lost me with about 30 minutes to go—but very good. Here are some things I thought.

1. Diablo Cody should let the haters hate.

People like to hate on Diablo Cody because she is, among other things, a strong female figure who speaks confidently and throws her opinions around, whether in interviews or in her work, with little hesitation, as are her characters. The things that people complained about with Juno—the kitschy dialogue, the occasional on-the-noseness—got better and worse, respectively, with Young Adult.

But there just aren’t that many writers and filmmakers out there whose personal, original work is guaranteed to make you think about humans. My favorite thing about Juno was that there are five or six principal characters, and there are exactly ten clearly drawn relationships, one between each of those characters independently of the main character. The same goes for Young Adult, albeit to a slightly lesser degree.

That said, the third act—everything from the climax/exposition/reveal moment at the baby’s christening (or whatever) on—got VERY Diablo Cody-ish. You could see her working out personal things, you could feel her making conscious character decisions, and you suddenly left the world of the story and entered a place where you’re sitting at a movie debating the merits and demerits of Diablo Cody’s writing style. Could have used another rewrite.

2. Charlize Theron looks terrible.

Shoutout to Charlize and director Jason Reitman for effectively making her into a beautiful blonde girl in great shape with amazing features and sexy makeup and costume—and making her utterly repulsive. I would look at her onscreen, and because of the nature of her character, but also the incredible scenes of makeup application and pasty-removal that showed the ladysausage being made, I found myself utterly sans boner. Charlize was boner inducing in The fucking Road, a movie about Viggo Mortensen trying not to let a little boy get R’d in a bleak apocalyptic landscape. “I’d hit that” -one thought I had seeing The Road. “Jesus I hope the basement meatslaves don’t R that little boy” -another.

And yet gorgeous Charlize managed to achieve a repulsive physiognomy despite being objectively fine as hell. I get the same feeling whenever I see Megyn Kelly.

3. Patton Oswalt could be Will Smith’s negative image.

The guy is an amazing actor who deserves the chance to build his stature in the acting world for a long time, with many roles, until he’s one of the big names. Did you see Big Fan? Really good. Patton Oswalt is an amazing actor.

My one request: He not pull an inverted Will Smith, and allow himself to be only cast as down-on-his-luck, dumpy schlub. Find this guy a John Adams role, Giamatti style.

4. “Remember the tiramisu?” - brilliant line.

I’ve heard people say Young Adult isn’t a comedy. It is. Precious is a straightforward drama. Young Adult is a comedy. It’s as dark as Precious (pre-photoshop), but it’s a comedy.

When Mavis complains that her mother has a photo up commemorating her failed marriage, her mother responds that the wedding wasn’t a failure, “remember the tiramisu?” Brilliant. Funny.

And Matt, Patton Oswalt’s character, bitterly explaining that people stopped caring about his brutally tragic beating when they learned that he was not gay, but just seemed gay, and therefore was not a hate crime victim? I daresay I let a horribly depressed guffaw.

But Cody slips a couple other brilliant one-liners in there, the one that resonated the hardest in my memory being “Guys like me were born loving women like you.” Said by Matt to Mavis, it answered the question of “What does he see in her?” with a jolt of brutal honesty that might have gone past several viewers. But it gave me chills.

5. Movies about women, when made honestly, are always pro-woman.

My biggest gripe with the movie was the clumsy way exposition is shoehorned into the climactic scene in the front yard. The (SPOILER ALERT DO NOT READ STARTING NOW IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN THE MOVIE BUT MIGHT WANT TO SEE IT) miscarriage plot point is a deeply moving one, deserving of a more graceful (in terms of the writing, not the character) reveal. As it is, it’s tacked onto a looong, totally uncomfortable blowup that is only barely redeemed by a garage door and a drum kit. She says it long after any real drunk person would have been escorted away by caring acquaintances and/or her mother, who was present for the scene.

That said, it shocked me how little I saw it coming, and how quickly I filed the information into the “things I must be compassionate about despite not really understanding at all” part of my brain. Kudos to Cody for bringing an honest, ugly portrayal of the emotional toll miscarriage into the cultural zeitgeist, as she did with pregnancy and birth in Juno. Cody is a hell of a writer and a beast, and deserves a long career in film and television for her bravery with such things.

ALL IN ALL I GIVE YOUNG ADULT A “It’s good. See it if you want to see it.”