3. Young Adult
Why It Should Have Been Great: Charlize Theron as Mavis, a self-centred author who wants to steal her ex, Buddy (Patrick Wilson), away from his loving family? Sold!
Why It Wasn't: Written by Diablo Cody and directed by Jason Reitman, Young Adult was marketed, somewhat erroneously, as a dark comedy. And so we expected a new benchmark for the bunny boiler; a protagonist we really shouldn't root for, someone as downright despicable as Billy Bob Thornton in Bad Santa. Yet the nastiest Mavis ever gets is when she tells someone to f**k off. The rest of the film is spent following her as she plans to lure Buddy away from his wife, and then moaning to Matt (Patton Oswalt), a former classmate who she barely remembers, when these schemes don't come to fruition. The 'joke' being, of course, that Mavis is too busy complaining about her perfectly privileged life to realise that others have it much worse. For example, Matt has been left disabled from a gang attack and is, understandably, still bitter about it. But, y'know, maybe the pair can share life lessons and help each other to become better people? And so it is with a belated sense of humility that Mavis, having undergone an obligatory Scrooge-like transformation, starts to see the world from a brighter perspective. Which, all things considered, is a bit of a shame.