Young Adult Reviews
Top CriticThere is a raw honesty here rare in movies, and it's very funny too - excruciating at times.
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| Original Score: 4/5
Young Adult may be the year's most engaging feel-bad movie.
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| Original Score: B-
There's little about Mavis that makes for feel-good revelry. That's an understatement, perhaps. Yet, Theron's work feels true to Mavis' malaise -- and often, just as sad.
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| Original Score: 3/4
As good as Theron and Oswalt are, and they're very good, Young Adult doesn't give them enough room to breathe.
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
A low-key, indie-style comedy that plays precariously close to an unfunny sociopathic case study.
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| Original Score: 2/4
There's enough grit in the film's gears to keep the forward motion from ever getting too smooth.
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
The comedy of discomfort, so long defined by Curb Your Enthusiasm and its ilk, gets a new hue with Young Adult.
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| Original Score: B
The movie doesn't weigh that much, but it has a kind of point-blank piquancy that has gradually seeped out of American comedies, which now are mostly going for broad, topical gags that rarely venture into the relatable shadows of human behavior.
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| Original Score: 3/4
Reitman makes bold choices with the story. Not all are fun to watch in the moment, but they add up to a satisfying portrait of a woman off the rails, someone we can laugh at even when we're horrified.
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| Original Score: 4/5
It's enjoyable as a character study, of a character most of us wouldn't want to meet.
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| Original Score: 3/4
Every time you're ready to write off Hollywood comedies, along comes a picture like Young Adult to keep hope alive.
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| Original Score: 3/4
It trades in discomfort and unease, not catharsis. That's an achievement worthy of admiration, if you can endure it.
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| Original Score: 3/4
Theron does a fairly convincing job. It's the movie surrounding her that isn't quite so convincing.
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| Original Score: B-
In a less acid romp, Mavis would learn life lessons in the final reel, but director Jason Reitman makes it a point not to let her off the hook.
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| Original Score: 7.5
"Young Adult" finally stumbles not because it tries to make us like Mavis, but because everyone else in it seems to, no matter what she does.
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
It's an imperfect film, to be sure, but the movie's refusal to sacrifice its leading lady on the altar of Here's How to Behave feels downright revolutionary.
Nobody ever said that adolescence was pretty, even if an increasing number of people are experiencing its final pangs on the cusp of middle age.
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| Original Score: 3/4
A dark comedy that confirms Diablo Cody as a screenwriter of importance, eliminates the last shred of doubt that Jason Reitman is a major director and gives Charlize Theron her best showcase since "Monster."
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| Original Score: 4/4
There is a brashness of style that both Cody and Reitman embody - almost demanding that we not only laugh at, but like the unlikable side of the human condition.
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| Original Score: 3.5/5
Screenwriter Diablo Cody has crafted a precisely drawn portrait of a surly, emotionally stunted woman.
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
It's a step in a new direction, both for the creative team and for movies, a mature and humane comedy centered on a misanthropic female antihero. Think of it as "Juno's" wicked stepsister.
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| Original Score: 3.5/4
In a thorny role, Theron is splendid; she instinctively reveals everything Mavis doesn't know about herself and offers an intimate peek into a wayward soul.
What makes the movie marvelous is the same combination that the filmmaker and writer brought to "Juno" -- unerringly subtle yet precise direction plus a literate script with dramatic energy and a delicate tone.
The movie suffers from the sort of self-pitying fog that can envelop a writer when he dives into his own malaise.
Patton Oswalt's dark duet with Charlize Theron is funny, touching and vital. But fair warning: The laughs in Young Adult leave bruises.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
"Young Adult" may at times be stuck between emotional gears, but that's by design. Like its heroine, the movie refuses to pick up after itself.
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| Original Score: 4/5
Shorter than a bad blind date and as sour as a vinegar Popsicle, "Young Adult" shrouds its brilliant, brave and breathtakingly cynical heart in the superficial blandness of commercial comedy.
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| Original Score: 4/5
Theron nails the specifics of her character, all the distress signals, from the nervous hair-pulling to the relentless default sarcasm.
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
As I absorbed it, I realized what a fearless character study it is. That sometimes it's funny doesn't hurt.
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| Original Score: 3.5/4
Charlize Theron delivers one of the most impressive performances of the year.
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| Original Score: 4.5/5
Ms. Theron, a true beauty and one of the screen's most exquisite actors, keeps the film airborne even when it seems dangerously earthbound. She's a one-woman emergency rescue squad.
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| Original Score: 2/4
The really pretty Theron captures that state of really ugly inner childishness (articulated so sharply by Cody) with such precision, it makes you want to hear stories of her own high school experience.
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| Original Score: A-
The attitude toward the protagonist is thinly-veiled contempt ... until, in the last 20 minutes or so, they attempt to turn her into an object of sympathy. It doesn't work and, on balance, neither does Young Adult.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
There are plenty of sharp aperçus and poignant character moments in "Young Adult," to be sure, but it's hard to tell where the movie's awkward comic knife edge slides away into clunkiness.
While one might be tempted to call it mature, that word suggests a capacity for self-evaluation and unsentimental levity.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
In the vein of Alexander Payne, Reitman finds just the right affectionately mocking tone in taking some jabs at small-town Midwestern life.
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| Original Score: 3/4
Young Adult might be brushed off as curdled rom-com were it not for two things. The first is the depth of Theron's performance.
Reteaming pop-savvy scribe Diablo Cody with Juno director Jason Reitman, Young Adult revels in breaking the rules of safe Hollywood storytelling.
...the film and its cast portray the [characters] with steadfastness, precision, empathy and a kind of poignant wisdom.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
On a scene-by-scene basis, Young Adult entirely engages with its smart exchanges between characters who are well equipped with rough edges and raw nerves.
