There is not a lot to like in Young Adult. Especially unlikeable is the main character, which is a difficult (but not impossible) problem to overcome. I liked some details--the loving, almost fetishistic attention to the inner workings of a memorex mix tape in the opening credits went too far and then kept going until it circled back around to greatness. The many close shots of manicures and pedicures; an expanse of a pale and freckled back in the foreground; the frank, underexplained images of hair pulling. These were the things I liked.
There is a standard thing that happens to characters like Mavis,* the ghostwriter in Young Adult. People as shallow and self-destructive as Mavis almost never get through a whole movie without undergoing some major transformation. Maybe it’s refreshing that instead of sticking to formula, Mavis experiences no epiphany, no change, and no catharsis. She simply decides in the end that her raging prom-queen shallowness is her best option--no, not just her best option, but actually correct.
To be fair to Young Adult, I am tired of the movies it is not. The movies that tell me how great and wholesome it is to be fulfilled by ordinary lives which are not actually ordinary at all. The it’s-a-wonderful-life syndrome, where a small-town guy thinks his life is meaningless, then discovers that actually he has a lot to live for, in the form of a beautiful and devoted wife, many adoring and/or adorable children, millions of friends, and quite meaningful work. But most of us aren’t George Bailey. If Frank Capra has convinced me of anything, it is that I probably should throw myself off a bridge, because I don’t have a lovely wife and four children, and I have never saved my hometown from the evil machinations of Lionel Barrymore. I’m bored with hollywood falsely endorsing ordinary lives.
So I should be pleased with Young Adult, which bravely refuses to embrace the lie of Capra’s small town America, an America that not only doesn’t exist now in the era of strip malls, but also never existed in the first place. Young Adult thumbs its nose (is there a more juvenile expression of disdain? flips the bird?) at the idea of values that are not utterly shallow. In the end, Mavis is faced with what might be understood as one single moment of authenticity, in the form of bad, ugly sex. Not mean sex, just bland and sad and based on a deeply felt, totally mutual pity.
I came away from this movie feeling like I’m supposed to believe you have the following choice in life: be “stupid and fat” like everyone in Mercury, or be slightly less stupid and have trichotillomania instead of fat, and live in a slightly less hick town, and sneer out loud at anyone who is centimers less than you as measured on the cultural cache tape measure.***
It’s surely true that anyone, at any level of success, can feel like a failure compared to one person and like a success compared to someone else. Being a superhot divorced lady and a ghost writer for a terminated series of young adult novels, for instance, might be someone’s idea of success and someone else’s idea of abject failure. That this movie accepts and illustrates that is fine. But the movie ends with music rising and cheerful, blatantly false voice-over as Mavis embraces her obviously destructive and terrible choices and the miserable life they have brought her. This makes it at best very dismal, with a message of supreme hopelessness. I guess you could call that brave.
* Is her name really Mavis? I feel like I must be getting that wrong.
** I really wish i could construct a pun here about a cultural mix tape measure, but for once I am not up to the challenge...
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