Young Adult

Writer-director duo Diablo Cody and Jason Reitman craft a dark comedy that lacks the overt humour of their debut collaboration, Juno. Two decades after high school, Mavis Gary (Charlize Theron)---or a “psychotic prom queen bitch” as one ex-classmate calls her---returns to her Minnesota hometown to reclaim a high school love, a handsome lug of a guy (Patrick Wilson) who’s married with a baby. A depressed alcoholic divorcee who’s trying to finish ghost writing a young adult novel, Mavis is so pathetic and juvenile you sympathize despite hating her, even at her most cringe-worthy. Theron succeeds at being humourously dumb to reality; but I don’t buy it that a 37-year-old couch potato could eat tubs of KFC and guzzle Maker’s Mark and still cut that figure. –Molly Segal