6. Young Adult (2011)
Dark Comedy to Drama Maybe I've got it wrong, but wasn't this film marketed as a dark comedy? Weren't we told to expect Charlize Theron to play a level of 'bad' that would fit neatly alongside the ranks of Teacher, Lieutenant and, erm, Santa? Wasn't this supposed to be the film that made it okay to like Diablo Cody? Theron plays Mavis, a 37 year old divorced author of trashy vampire novels who, upon receiving an email from her high school boyfriend, Buddy, (Patrick Wilson), takes it for a sign that they are meant to be together. Never mind the fact that he has since married and that the email in question is a completely innocuous photo of his newborn daughter, she's clearly been given the orders to rescue him from his (perfectly nice) wife, Beth. What's more, she's convinced enough to travel back to her Minnesota hometown and break the news to Buddy in person. Yup, she's deluded; which if nothing else should make for entertaining viewing. And, for the first half- hour at least, it certainly does. Watching Mavis wriggle her way into Buddy's nest of domestic bliss is precisely the type of awkward comedy that you simultaneously do and don't want to be a part of. She's shameless, selfish and seemingly unaware of recognising when she's causing a scene. So her conscience arrives in the shape of former classmate Matt (Patton Oswalt), who proves himself not only a killjoy to Mavis but also to the audience. All the mordant humour, the trashy desperation, and the car-crash catastrophe that was surely just about to happen disappears in an instant. In fact, the nastiest thing Mavis does to Beth is tell her to ''f**k off'', before having a very public breakdown at a barbecue. Now we're left with a melodramatic mess in which Mavis and Beth reconcile their differences and cry and smile and laugh and talk about the good old days and discover that- would you believe it- they both wanted to be each other in high school! Turns out that all of Mavis' problems can be solved with a girly chat. Such a soppy ending is not only disappointing, it's insulting. It's not just the cynics in the cinema who would do well to demand a refund.