Young Adult vs Larry Crowne

Mavis (Charlize Theron) keeps reality TV playing at all times, even though she never watches it. The Kardashians, the Teen Moms, and probably the Real Housewives, play out their shallow dramas while Mavis sleeps on the couch with her back to the television. When Mavis manages to sleep in her bed, she’s hung over in her clothes, or awkwardly trying to exit under the arm of a one-night stand. Before she can put her feet painfully onto the floor, she chugs from a 2-liter bottle of Diet Coke. Mavis is a drunk, and a bitter, delusional, manipulator. It’s hard to think of another movie character as much of a wreck as Mavis that isn’t a comical oaf, and doesn’t resort to violent villainy. Yes, Mavis is a villain, but she’s a villain without a psychosis. She’s like Alex from Fatal Attraction, if she’d come to terms with being ignored. She’s like a Bridget Jones no one comes to love just as she is. I keep reading how unsympathetic and unlikable Mavis is. So. Why does she have to be likable? Is it necessary to see yourself in every single thing all year long? If Young Adult were merely funny, I’d be just fine observing Mavis’ deplorable behavior, as a vicarious movie experience, and then dropping her during the credits. We all do that with movie characters and circumstances all the time. But for some reason, Young Adult is striking a nerve with people who demand something to grasp onto with the lead character: some morality, something with which to empathize. If you can’t find it in Mavis, maybe ask yourself why. And when you hear how much I liked her, you may have a question or two for me as well.

Mavis grew up in a small town in Minnesota, and then moved to Minneapolis after high school, to be a writer. The job she found—ghost writing a series of teen romance novels—is coming to an end. Mavis has just gotten an email, a mass email probably sent to her entire graduating class, that her high school boyfriend, Buddy (Patrick Wilson) is a new dad. Mavis prints out the baby’s picture, and comes to a sudden realization: Buddy sent her that email as a cry for help. It was his message in a bottle to come save him from the boredom and misery of family life in their hometown. Mavis packs a bag, grabs her tiny dog, pops in an old mix tape, and heads home to reclaim the love of her life.

I’m sure there’s something comfortingly romantic comedy-esque about all of this. On paper, Young Adult resembles Sweet Home Alabama, or My Best Friend’s Wedding. It probably seems that way to Mavis as well. She’s still got her looks, right? And that cool job in the big city? Buddy is hers for the taking. That wife of his (Elizabeth Reaser) is probably holding him back. Mavis to the rescue. But Buddy is happy, and his wife seems nice, and their hometown might be a snooze (the big news is a couple new fast food joints on the main drag), but it turns out it’s the right speed for them and the rest of Mavis’ former classmates. After she spends a while there, you get the idea that Mavis sleeping off benders in the city isn’t much different than the sleepwalking she’d be doing in her hometown. The only thing she has over her old friends is the mystery of her life apart from them (it’s telling that no one ever visits her). So she puts on her fake hair, tons of makeup, her skimpiest dress, and an exaggerated version of her professional success, ready to show them all who won. No one cares. The only ally Mavis finds at home is Matt Freehoff (Patton Oswalt), who spent high school worshipping Mavis from the next locker over, but has learned enough harsh life lessons in the meantime that he’s evolved past her. Mavis needs Matt as a drinking buddy, and a sounding board for her schemes, but there’s something else happening. Mavis and Matt are equally cynical, equally lonely, and equally uncomfortable with intimacy. Matt’s issues are based in past trauma (I wouldn’t reveal it here for the world), while Mavis’ are more self-inflicted; but their friendship, as shallow and convenience-based as it might seem, is one of the more organic and fun I’ve seen in a movie since Lost In Translation.

Charlize Theron and Patton Oswalt give difficult, intricate performances in Young Adult. Theron could easily breeze through her scenes, emphasizing Mavis’ neuroses and hammering home one-liners. Instead, she makes Mavis’ tragic lack of self-awareness a badge of honor. If Mavis doesn’t understand that she hates her hometown because of a certain kind of self-hate, then maybe she can convince her hometown that it's to be pitied for not rising to her level. I believed every selfish, self-destructive step Mavis took. Theron doesn’t miss a beat, from the voice Mavis uses for singing in the car, to the narrow slits her eyes become when she’s challenged, by anyone, about anything. And Oswalt matches her in each of their scenes together. At first he’s suspicious and incredulous that they’re even speaking. He begins to relish their banter, though, and develops sort of a baffled concern for Mavis. It’s not quite friendship, not that she’d recognize it as such anyway. Mavis is almost like a guilty-pleasure reality show—the kind she naps through—that Matt wouldn’t dream of missing, but keeps secret. As a toast, Matt says, “You’re a piece of work.” “You’re a piece of shit,” Mavis replies. If Theron and Oswalt’s real life relationship doesn’t mirror Mavis and Matt exactly, I never want to know.

Young Adult is Jason Reitman and screenwriter Diablo Cody’s follow-up to Juno. This movie is more confident than that one, more subtle and lived-in. Although I liked Juno, it carried almost too much snark and sitcommery, its characters talking as if they knew they were characters. Young Adult has none of that. Mavis is the only person in town who views herself as the center of anything, much less a movie. Young Adult is lit and costumed just like the town it’s set in. Dark bars, plain homes, discount hotels. Young Adult makes cautious reference to Mavis, Matt and Buddy’s teen years, but aside from an achingly well-chosen soundtrack and a couple quiet Heathers sidebars, there’s nothing cute or retro happening. Young Adult is more akin to All The Real Girls than, say, Romy & Michelle’s High School Reunion.

But what about Mavis’ cold heart? Does it earn redemption? Does someone tell her off, or teach her to love? Does she get the harsh movie comeuppance every unlovable female character must endure? What would that look like? I’ve seen it, and it’s the ugliest fate of them all.

Larry Crowne (Tom Hanks) is a bit like Mavis. He’s hit a certain age when he thought his life would have played towards success, and instead, he’s hit a wall. Larry works in a department store (it’s alternately played like a big box Costco type place, and a tiny general store in which Larry performs every task happily), and is ineligible for a promotion because of his lack of education. Because he’s not eligible for any more promotions, he gets fired. That’s…similar to things that happen? Kind of? It resembles reality, a little? Regardless, Larry, being a salt-of-the-earth guy, pulls himself up by the bootstraps, and hits the local community college, to better himself, get a stronger foothold in the workplace, and of course, fall in love.

Larry’s heart was broken, you see, by his ex-wife. We never meet her. His friends across the street (Cedric the Entertainer and Taraji P. Henson) fawn over him about it, so we can only assume the wife is the bad guy. Taraji P. Henson isn’t taking your side if you aren’t right, everybody. So that makes Larry more of a Buddy type, and his ex-wife is the unseen, evil Mavis.

Larry ends up in a couple cute, fun, funny classes. Speech is taught by Julia Roberts, who is tired, drunk, rude, and unhappily married. Will Larry melt her icy heart? You heard her do the Julia Roberts Romantic Comedy Laugh in the trailer, didn’t you? Will he succeed in school? Will everyone in Speech class succeed based on Larry’s dedication? Yes and yes. Will Larry find a circle of friends who invite him to join their Wilmer Valderrama-led scooter gang? Of course—wait, is that a thing? Do community colleges have quirky scooter gangs that operate like real gangs, and you can be invited to join one, and they’ll come over and give you a makeover and make the speech instructor want to fuck you?

It’s not like I can’t see that Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts are an appealing match; they have good comic timing, similar fake hair color, ninety minutes to burn. But haven’t they been through this before? The last time they were together, in Charlie Wilson’s War, each got something completely new to portray. Larry Crowne proves critics of Young Adult wrong in a key way: liking Larry doesn’t make his movie better. Larry Crowne makes such a point of being a movie of the people (Tom Hanks gets it, you guys), but is so tritely positive that it comes across as negative, cynical, and unrealistic. Every scene is designed to make you cheer, or cry, or laugh that knowing laugh of, hey, we’ve all been there, right?  Everything rings false, from little things like “That’s not how stores work” and “That’s not how college works” to big things like “That’s not how people talk” and “Why are they in love if they clearly still don’t like each other?”. Larry Crowne is as contrived and manipulative as the pre-teen romance books Mavis writes in Young Adult. It only takes Larry that one semester of community college to turn his life around, romantically, economically, fashionwise. Tom Hanks directed and cowrote (with screenplay red flag Nia Vardalos), and he knows the beats of a romantic comedy, but with the everyman troubles aspect of Larry Crowne, he comes up short. When Diablo Cody first came on the scene, I thought too much fuss was made about her working class roots, on and off the stripper pole. But she knows things, like whether or not you can bring a dog to a Hampton Inn, or what’s appropriate to wear to a sports bar during the day, or how the Matt Freehoffs of the world decorate their bedrooms. The Larry Crownes of the world shake their heads in pity and dismay at the lonely Happy Hours inhabited by people like Mavis and Matt. Jason Reitman and Diablo Cody prove that some of us want to pull up a chair and join them.

Young Adult: A

Larry Crowne: C-