Anchoring your movie with a main character that is utterly unlikable and almost completely devoid of admirable qualities is a dangerous move. Aside from the innate human interest in just desserts and seeing bad things happen to bad people, there aren't many ways to win over an audience's interest, let alone affection, with a portrait of a detestable human being.
But that's exactly what director Jason Reitman ("Up in the Air") and writing partner Diablo Cody ("Juno") committed to in their latest collaboration, "Young Adult," in which Charlize Theron plays Mavis, the high school prom queen with a superiority complex who grew up to be an alcoholic mediocre ghostwriter for schlocky young adult novels.
Mavis returns home to her small Minnesota hometown in an attempt to steal back her high school sweetheart by luring him away from his wife and child. Naturally, Theron's character creates a myriad of horribly awkward situations for everyone around her, remaining completely oblivious to it all.
In the post-laugh-track era, silent moments permeated by social awkwardness have become a well-used trope in comedies. Shows like "The Office" revel in the frequent awkwardness afforded by carefully crafted un-selfaware characters like Steve Carell's Michael Scott.
These characters, blind to how their actions are truly perceived by others, often clouded by notions of grandeur and and childlike wishful thinking, project their tinted perspectives of reality on those around them, usually resulting in humorously engaging, if awkward, moments.
However, a key aspect to the vast majority of these awkward-moment-generating characters is their innate likability. Despite their cluelessness, these characters usually posses likable, redeeming qualities. That is not the case with Mavis, the brilliant creation of Cody and Reitman, who has no personal warmth to inevitably win back the hearts of the audience. Even if she were fully aware of how her behaviors were perceived, Mavis, a borderline sociopath, wouldn't care anyway.
While Reitman and Cody had me uncomfortably squirming in my seat every few minutes like clockwork, I was still compelled to remain there fully engaged by the character portrait unfolding before me.
While I certainly felt no affection for Mavis, she felt real in a way very few fictional characters do. She feels like a completely accurate portrait of a human being stripped of all the unrealistic redeeming qualities that Hollywood storytellers inevitably force upon their creations.
She felt like a person I would actually have to deal with in real life and loathe in doing so. But that's what makes "Young Adult" so interesting-it shows you the sad realities behind the obnoxious people you love to loathe.
Tina Fey's progressive sitcom "30 Rock" frequently likes to set up a corny or clichéd joke, offering the audience an obvious punchline, but then subvert expectations by taking the punchline in a completely unexpected tangential direction. This usually turns traditional sitcom values on its head.
The conclusion to Reitman's "Young Adult" feels very much like one of these riffs on clichéd audience expectations, but without the zany odd-ball punchline. When Theron's Mavis begins to possibly question her own megalomania and place in life, the plain quiet girl who worshipped her in high school despite being ignored is there to comfort her through what the audience immediately assumes will be the character's transition into becoming a better person.
This is the point in the story where the character looks at herself introspectively, learns her lesson, vows to change for the better, and rides off into the sunset. The picturesque finale, delivered time after time by Hollywood, is precisely what Reitman deprives his audience of. Mavis never changes, instead becoming further entrenched in her bitterness and delusions.
Reitman's subversion of typical Hollywood tropes like the universally likable protagonist, narrative arcs of personal growth, and happily-ever-after endings produces a product that, while assaulting to the rose-colored-glasses view disseminated by Hollywood, is ultimately a much more accurate portrait of real life where most people never actually change, and is intrinsically fascinating as a result. Finally, someone is giving it to audiences straight, even if the message is that a lot of people are hopeless self-absorbed assholes.
Got an opinion? Let David know at dcottrell@wisc.edu.
