Charlize Theron behaves badly in Young Adult

This was the year for dark comedies featuring unflattering portraits of attractive but unhappy and selfish women. First there was the raucously hilarious Bridesmaids, followed by the thuddingly unfunny Bad Teacher, and now the wryly amusing, if uneven, Young Adult.

Charlize Therons callously self-absorbed character makes Kristen Wiigs daft malcontent in Bridesmaids look like the epitome of maturity, equanimity and tact.

An overgrown adolescent at 37, Therons Mavis Gary, an erstwhile writer of young-adult fiction, is beautiful, entitled and insufferably egotistical. Seemingly on a whim after receiving a birth announcement email she leaves Minneapolis and returns to the hometown she despises to win back her now-married high school boyfriend, Buddy Slade (Patrick Wilson).

Theron is such a talented actress, its impossible not to admire her gutsy performance. But watching Mavis cruel and delusional behaviour is more cringe-inducing than funny.

Screenwriter Diablo Cody has crafted a precisely drawn portrait of a surly, emotionally stunted woman. Mavis doesnt seem to know where her teen fiction leaves off and real life begins.

Only sporadically attentive to her fluffy purse dog, Dolce, Mavis lacks meaningful human relationships. She peaked in high school, where she was the sort of popular girl who never noticed the schlep whose locker was next to hers for four years.

She won best hair in high school, but two decades later, she nervously pulls out clumps of it.

The best lines belong to Patton Oswalt, who plays Matt Freehauf, the fellow with the adjoining locker. As a teenager, he was badly beaten in a gay-bashing incident. They run into each other in a bar, and Mavis dimly remembers the scuffle, addressing him as that hate crime guy.

When Mavis drunkenly reveals her plans to reclaim her man, Matt reminds her that Buddy is happily married and a new father. No big deal, she insists.

Buddy Slade and I are meant to be! togethe r, and Im here to get him back, she confides to Matt, who urges her to seek professional help.

Her dismissive attitude toward the baby is dryly humorous: Ive got baggage, too.

Young Adult has the snark but not the upbeat resolution of 2007s Juno, screenwriter Cody and director Jason Reitmans last joint effort. While on sardonic turf, its scathingly funny. Then it veers from biting wit to pitiful. At one juncture, the story threatens to spin off into Fatal Attraction territory.

But the filmmakers get points for acknowledging that people rarely change. Redemption is just not in the cards for Mavis, as much as we hope it might be.

McClatchy-Tribune news services