Young Adults should be kept in cages

*High grade spoiler alert!

I have been anxiously awaiting the release of this movie. Charlize Theron single handedly playing out the adult version of ‘Mean Girls’ was something I couldn’t wait to see. I loved the character from ‘Monster’ for which she received an Oscar nod, and I felt like she would play a really tuned in glitzy bitch. I was right. ‘Young Adult’ is a winner. 

 ‘Mavis’, Charlizes’ character in this film, is a hideously callous and self serving sociopath who was much more frightening to me than the character that won her an Oscar. She starts her journey in a lonely booze filled apartment in ‘Mini Apple’, her small home towns pet name for Minneapolis. She is a ghost writer for the spin off book series from a popular young adult TV series. She is miserable.

We watch Mavis catapult herself into the life of her ex high school flame ‘Buddy Slade’, played by the lovely and completely ordinary Patrick Wilson. She knows that he has just had a baby with his wife (an old school friend of theirs) and could not care less. In fact, she sees the baby as being another noose that her home town has tied around the neck of her soulmate buddy, and that she must go and rescue him.

In a great inversion of the classic damsel in distress fairytale, Mavis seeks to save Buddy from his parochial life and come to the big city where they can be free. Her only real hiccup (apart from the fact that Buddy is not interested) is that another classmate of theirs ( a depressing character by the name of ‘Matt’, played by the wonderful Patton Oswalt) is onto her and is trying to stop her from breaking up her old flames family.

Save spoiling the entire movie, I’ll just say that it is well worth watching. I was cringing so much at times that I almost had to take a break from the movie. Vivid memories of high school bullies reared their ugly heads and I began thinking about what those ‘Mavis’s’ from my school were doing. Don’t make your partner sit through this one. It’s strictly a chick flick and will have you sitting there hoping that the cows who made your life hell in high school are all now low functioning alcoholics. I guess we are all mean girls!