On Movies: Theron is one grand wretch in 'Young Adult'

December 04, 2011|By Steven Rea, Inquirer Columnist

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Charlize Theron says her drunken, depressed, and destructive (PHILLIP V. CARUSO)

Charlize Theron's first major role in three years (yes, since Hancock, since The Burning Plain) finds the actress in fine form.

Actually, scratch that. It finds Theron in terrible form: In Young Adult, an uncomfortable comedy from the Juno team of writer Diablo Cody and director Jason Reitman, Theron is Mavis Gary, a boozing, depressed ghostwriter for a tween girls book series.

Mavis staggers around her Minneapolis high-rise apartment like a zombie in sweats, stuffing her face with junk food, trolling the Internet - anything to avoid writing. And then she gets an e-mail with an announcement - her high school beau and his wife have had a baby.

This news sends Mavis into a profound funk - followed shortly thereafter by a profoundly bad idea. She's going to go back to her little hometown and steal Bud! dy Slade (Patrick Wilson) from his new family, destroy his marriage, reclaim what's rightfully hers. She piles into her Mini Cooper, pops in a mix tape, and heads for hicksville. All sorts of destructive, obsessive, disastrous behavior follows.

"Mavis really has this incredible loneliness, that's where all of this stems from," says Theron about the messed-up woman she plays in Young Adult. The film opens in New York and Los Angeles on Friday, in Philadelphia and other markets Dec. 16. Theron, winner of the best actress Academy Award for her grueling turn as a serial killer in 2004's Monster, is generating Oscar buzz again for this latest role.

But back to the loneliness, the emptiness.

"I think that's what people connect with," Theron said recently on the phone from New York. "Because there are things that she does that we might not connect with - that are, in fact, pretty despicable. She does stuff that is hard to watch. But this foundation of loneliness, and this lack of a tool set to deal with these very adult issues. . . . I think that's moving, and relatable, and also very entertaining."

Some of the most moving and entertaining parts of Reitman's film come when Theron's Mavis strikes up a friendship with a townie she meets in a bar - and who had watched her longingly, and invisibly, back in their old high school days. Comedian Patton Oswalt plays this guy, who comes with his own emotional - and physical - handicaps.

"I had never met Patton before," Theron says. "And he's incredible. Funny, perceptive. And his character is kind of ethically there, whereas Mavis has thrown her ethics out the window."