The Addams Family 2

Oh, *Snap* *Snap*

or

National Lampoon Addams Family Family Vacation Negation

 

I've made plain my life-long love of "The Addams Family" especially the TV-series based on the macabre New Yorker cartoons of Charles Addams (not the worst source for a TV show...), which, for its short two year run, did a running black satire of family sitcoms—credit to Nat Perrin, who'd worked with the Marx Brothers and who knew "funny."

Attempts to revive the characters have been monstrously uneven whether in film, TV revivals or cartoon series. The best result was Barry Sonenfeld's film Addams Family Values, which managed to combine satire—and not sitcom-satire, real satire—and clever writing to make a wicked little movie on many levels. 

 

The same could not be said for 2019's The Addams Family, a CGI-animation version that knew exactly what it was supposed to do...but couldn't make it funny. With that title, you could immediately guess that cleverness was not going to be the spark that animated the thing to life.

 

Well, now everybody's back with...The Addams Family 2. Its biggest joke might be the "Submitted for Your Consideration" ad come Oscar-time.

Oh, technically, it's all fine. CGI being what it is these days, something (like, say, a waterfall) has to be really dodgy for it to be noticed. It's just that there is a sense of rote-ness to this, a feeling that the ambitions are so slim, the characters so known, that any effort besides the obvious isn't attempted, and in fact is avoided, lest it fall out of a PG category and betray the lack of sophistication expected in animated films. There's no shock, no envelope-pushing, and no sense of the black humor emblematic of the original Addams work in The New Yorker.

This one, like the last, focuses on Wednesday Addams (Chloë Grace Moretz), who is going through all sorts of growing pains. For her school's science project, she's developed a way to transfer tendencies from one being to another (ala Freaky Friday (both of them) and God knows how many other films and television shows)—in this case, she transfers her pet octopus' higher brain functions to her sweet but diminished Uncle Fester (Nick Kroll). Fester will, as the film progresses, take on more and more octo-tendencies, which the family doesn't really notice too much (which is odd but not funny). Wednesday's work is noticed by a mad scientist named Cyrus Strange (Bill Hader, surprisingly uneffective) who would like to know her methodology, which she refuses to divulge as "a family secret." 

This starts a plot where Strange sets up a plot to convince the Addams Family that Wednesday was switched at birth with another child (as the joke that Addams used for Wednesday was that she resembled her mother this makes little sense and they have to do extra work to get past DNA issues). As Wednesday is already feeling estranged from her family, this sets too well with her, but not the others, and Gomez suggests they go on a family road trip to see the worst of America (planned stops are Salem, Sleepy Hollow, Miami, San Antonio, The Grand Canyon, Death Valley, and...Sausalito). If one did a little more research—or just had the cajones to risk offending people—they could have found a LOT of places to go.

It's not a lot of fun—there were two lines that made me laugh: When the family sits down to dinner, Fester starts to dig in and Morticia chastises him: "Fester, wait for the children..." to which he replies "I thought we were having CHICKEN!" And at a detour to Niagara Falls, Morticia asks Wednesday "Having fun, dear?" To which she replies "I'm looking at Canada, if that answers your question..." (just the phrasing of that I liked). There's also a nice shot of Gomez being so depressed, he can't even cradle his head on his hands. "Thing" has to do it. It's at the bottom of the review, as it graphically encapsulates how I feel about the film.

The cast does a good job for all they're asked to do: Oscar Isaac is the proper amount of latin dash as Gomez, but Charlize Theron seems to be under the impression that Morticia went to Bryn Mawr. Chloë Grace Moretz has the largest role as Wednesday, but doesn't do much to sell the humor of her depressed daughter, and Nick Kroll does a fine imitation of Jackie Coogan's TV Uncle Fester, but with considerably more saliva. And why the producers thought the sonorous butler Lurch would, when he sings (!!!), have a high singing voice I have no idea, but they do it. He sings "I Will Survive" which isn't funny and makes little sense story-wise.

But, then, that passes for the best you can expect from this milquetoast Addams Family series, which is the wrong format for the wrong audience and betrays and negates the peculiar charms of Addams' original work. It should be staked, coffined, chained, and buried 12 feet deep in salted, sanctified Earth never to materialize in this incarnation again.

Bombshell

FOX in the Hen-House (The Cure For What Ailes You)
or
"A Babe With No Geezer? This Can't Be a FOX Affiliate!"

"The first thing you should know about me..." says Bombshell's version of Megyn Kelly (Charlize Theron) right off the bat "...is I have a big mouth."

Well, for good or ill, that's the FOX news paradigm, and it has nothing to do with sexism or the sex of the on-air talent. Everybody on FOX News has a big mouth, an overly-aggressive personality, and a slightly off-lobe brain that considers opportunity over content. I've never had an illusion of any of the FOX News staff being thoughtful or contemplative. 

Not even while looking in a mirror.

It is always "Hot Talk" on FOX NEWS, that most empty of formats that sheds heat but never any light. Sure, it's entertaining if you're of that frame of mind, but you have to have the naivete of a tither to a TV evangelist to buy it. Caveat Empty-Head.

END of personal FOX screed: onto the movie.

Bombshell is written by Charles Randolph, who did such things as The Life of David Gale, Love and Other Drugs, and The Big Short (in ascending order of quality) and there's not a fourth wall he's not afraid to kick at to get to the audience. If something gets too tough to communicate (as in The Big Short), he will stop the proceedings to explain it to the Nth degree. In the case of Bombshell, we get the whole story by way of Megyn Kelly's Greek chorus, who explains what goes on at FOX news, the work environment, the philosophy, and her role in that environment, which she sees as somewhat loftier than others do. She is about to be a contributor to the Republican debates and it is her intention to hit candidate Donald Trump with his history of boorishness towards women. She is understandably nervous, but determined to make an impact. 

Meanwhile. Gretchen Carlson (Nicole Kidman), who was on the popular morning show "Fox and Friends," has moved to be an afternoon show host and she's in the middle of contract negotiations with the Corp. But, she has higher aspirations. She's tired of being treated like a bimbo, both on and off-screen, and wants to do something more with her show, to the point where she starts to veer a little off-point from the standard fare. And she wants there to be a little more respect given her. At least, knock off the crass jokes. Her current contract prevents her from suing FOX. But, there's nothing in her contract from personally suing the Chairman of FOX NEWS, Roger Ailes (portrayed by John Lithgow and half a ton of make-up).

Ailes is all about loyalty...all about loyalty. He runs FOX with an iron fist on the tiller (because, as he says, if he doesn't, news will always veer left). So, he runs a tight ship, emphasizes that loyalty—and if you're loyal, you'll be rewarded, maybe. It's frankly not that different a psychological threat as a CEO expounds these days, drawing comparisons to businesses as family, with, of course BIG Daddy calling the shots. There is no question, or even acknowledgment, that there might be another way to do things other than a patriarchy.

Carlson's strategem is closely observed by Kelly, who is slightly distracted by the fall-out from her debate question, finding out, much to her distress, that she has become the focus of coverage rather than the issues she was trying to bring up. She, however, remains silent when, all of a sudden, investigators for Carlson start looking for women at FOX who can confirm harassment allegations against Ailes.

Into the mix comes Kayla Popisil (Margot Robbie), young, blond, conservative, raised in a mid-west religious household, who wants to make it big at FOX NEWS, which is her dream. She starts to work her way up from basement producer and then gets her "big meeting" with Ailes, who gives her the loyalty speech and a test of her loyalty...that she'll be willing to cooperate.

Bombshell is tough (in the screenplay department, anyway), not only on the corporate environment that allows such indiscretions for the aggrandizement of its "Master of the Universe" CEO's...or anyone capable of using sexual blackmail just because they can, but also for the lack of sisterhood that would allow such stuff to be contained as "company secrets." This isn't the stuff of—as companies like to advertise—"a name you can trust," but is more in keeping with the thuggery of a jail-yard, where everybody's in it for themselves. Most companies are inherently predatory—it is their bottom line to take your money, after all—it isn't a stretch for them sweep dirt under the rug, hide things you might like in small-printed terms and conditions, and circle the wagons in Escher-like PR boiler-plate. FOX NEWS is merely the loudest, most blathering (in protesting its innocence) example of such predatory practices and the default follow-up of denial.

There's the added inherent sexism that's employed whenever the victims are women...the same sort of doubling-down on that only adds insult to injury in a rape trial. Nobody ever questions that events happen because the perpetrators are men—why?—or that the ruthlessness displayed in business (and praised, admired and emulated) might be the same alligator-brained synapse that makes power-brokers think they can use it against their own employees. Why does loyalty only work from the bottom up and not the top down? As long as there's that disparity, loyalty must continue to be lateral among peers to create strength in numbers and create a din that drowns out corporate whispers.

I just wish there was a better director in charge of it. Jay Roach has been reaching for issue-cred after starting out making comedies of "indeterminate humor" (the "Austin Powers" series, the "Meet the Parents" series, Dinner for Schmucks) and his approach is still uninspiring and rarely moves beyond an ability to "get the shot." In other hands, Bombshell might have been a more powerful movie, even a galvanizing one.

Instead, it's less a "Me, Too" movie and more of a "Meh, Too" movie.

The Addams Family (2019)

Altogether Ooky (And I Don't Even Know What That MEANS!!)
or
"Are You Unhappy, Darling?" "Oh, Yes, Yes! Completely"*

I've written about how much I loved "The Addams Family" (both as a 1960's TV show and as a concept from Charles Addams' series of macabre  New Yorker cartoons from 1932 to his apparent death in 1988), and the rather "iffy" attempts to continue the perverse charm in Barry Sonenfeld's feature films and TV spin-off's. There's been a Broadway musical (that I know nothing about) and there were rumors a few years ago that Tim Burton was working on a stop-motion version—which might have been interesting. Burton might not have been entirely faithful to it, but he would have captured the spirit and the schtick that made the old series so enjoyable (as opposed to the watered-down "Munsters" that appeared on CBS at roughly (very roughly) the same time.

Well, that would have been interesting. And probably far more enjoyable than the latest re-boot of The Addams Family, written by Conrad Vernon, Pamela Pettler, Matt Lieberman, Erica Rivinoja and directed by Vernon and Greg Tiernan.

Kudo's to them for designing it closer to Addams' original conceptions (although they don't always make compelling characters—their version of Addams daughter Wednesday is particularly bland) and there are some rare body-snatches of Addams original material—like the line (*) in this post's title. But, the whole thing is barely enjoyable, particularly because some of the voice-casting is underwhelming, with the exception of Oscar Isaac's "Gomez" and Nick Kroll's "Uncle Fester."

But, there's also less emphasis on the family dynamics and more on their "otherness" from somewhat ordinary citizenry. That tactic has always been dull—unless the "normals" were weirder than the Addamses—and usually the least intriguing part of any "Addams" story. How many gawping reactions can you get before it gets old and starts decaying before your eyes? And this version of "The Addams Family" has an awful lot of that.

The film begins with the wedding of Gomez (Isaac) and Morticia (Charlize Theron—she tries, although the role would be better suited to another cast-member, Allison Janney) attended by the Addams Extended Family, but it gets interrupted by locals with torches and pitchforks—ordinary people are turned murderously monstrous by what they fear (now where have we seen that before?)** Escaping with Fester (Kroll) and "Thing" (their literal hand-servant), the joyously gloomy newly-weds head for their honeymoon in New Jersey (State Motto: "What Are YOU Looking At?), where they run down an escapee from an asylum for the criminally insane, who turns out to be Lurch (muttered by director Vernon), who will become their beloved man...er...creature-servant. Trying to return him to the asylum, they find the facility closed (by police tape), abandoned, and haunted. But, for them, it's merely a lovely fixer-upper dream-home to raise a family—but not from the dead—and put down gnarled roots.

Morticia is mortified that Wednesday starts to show interest in bling
"But, darling, pink is a gateway color!"

Cut to thirteen years later. The Addamses have an older daughter Wednesday (Chloe Grace Moretz) and son Pugsley (Finn Wolfhard, busy young man). Wednesday, full of woe, has grown rebellious ("But, darling, you have all the horrors of home right here!") and Pugsley is approaching an Addams right of passage. No, it's not a Bat Mitzvah (but thanks for going there), it's a Mazurka, in which he must demonstrate his prowess as a warrior with the Addams Scimitar. That's not Pugsley's style—he's more of an expert in explosives—and Gomez fears that, despite his worst efforts, Pugsley will be an embarrassment to the Family coming to witness the momentous event. This sentiment seems un-Addamsish.

Meanwhile, gentrification also challenges The Addams Family. At the base of their escarpment their mausoleum is perched on, a development has cropped up, sponsored by the Home, Art, and Garden Network (HAG-TV) and its principal make-over star, Margaux Needler (Janney). As if to push the point a little too far, the name of the town is "Assimilation," and the movie is consumed with her efforts to get rid of the eye-sore that sits in the cross-hairs of Assimilation's picture-windows.

Margaux stops by to give the Addams House a make-over.
The hair may be a political point.

Oh, there are good lines—at one point Wednesday runs away from home, insisting on going to public school (rather than "cage-schooling") and she's asked if she wants to go to the Mall to which she replies "Sure, I haven't seen a good mauling in ages"—but, it's relatively simple to get laughs out of Addams contrariness. The very fact that they're a morbid bunch makes them a natural anathema to normalcy and rife with satirical possibilities aimed at white picket fences. But, this version is a little too desperate to find them. And bludgeons them like a wooden stake.

There's an awful lot of music humor—too much of it—Lurch plays "Green Onions" on the organ and, at one point, "Everybody Hurts." It's a little weak. And it has the annoying habit of going back to the well of the TV-show for dread-cred, rather than stake out new territory. The film-makers make too much of a big deal of the pet lion (in the TV series, did we see that twice?) Did we really need an animated version of the TV-show's theme song that matches the live version to the last detail? Can't this be its own "thing" (so to speak?) without cleaving so close to the source? Are we to reduce the Addams Family to being a horrid cliche, with the very first movie in a re-boot series?

I know it's a children's movie and all, but the group who made the "Hotel Transylvania" films had a better coffin-handle on the material than this weak effort has. 

Maybe I'm a little too close to the source, but, after watching this, I had a normal urge to go down to Lowe's and get a cart full of torches and pitch-forks.

*

** Short Answer: "Everywhere"

"That's 'It', Folks!"

In the Valley of Elah

There is a gesture...at the end of Spike Lee's Blackkklansman (review tomorrow, fingers crossed)...that some folks may not "get." The best display of it, thus, far was in Paul Haggis' In the Valley of Elah, the review of which, tepid as it is, is below. 

On the occasion of a nationwide calling out of the President's war on the Fourth Estate, I want to state my support for a free press willing to speak truth to power. Rather than being an "enemy of the people," it is, instead, an enemy to tyranny, in whatever guise it trumps itself up in, corporate, political, or religious, especially here at home. 

Written at the time of the film's release....

The Quagmire at Home

This is Paul Haggis' first directorial effort since Crash. In the meantime he wrote three films for Clint Eastwood, The Last Kiss and Casino Royale. He wrote this one for Eastwood, too, but to star in, not direct, which Clintus declined, saying that he's retired from acting. Too bad. This one might have gotten him that Best Actor Oscar. As it is, Tommy Lee Jones has the role, probably does a better job of it, and is certainly deserving of an Oscar. His Hank Deerfield, ex-Army investigator, is a portrait of a guy so meticulous, so disciplined that you wait for him to crack the whole film. It's one of the joys of the film, along with another of Charlize Theron's fine "de-glammed" performances, and Susan Sarandon bringing maximum effort to a small but vital role, all doing great work in a film that tries to be too many things, though it does succeed in many of them.

Part mystery, part war-story, part psychological drama, Elah, punctuates its story with fragments of media recovered from a cell-phone that, like Blow-Up and The Conversation, give tantalizingly legible glimpses into Deerfield's son's tour in Iraq, and frustratingly opaque clues into his post-Iraq behavior. He's gone AWOL, and Dad Deerfield goes to New Mexico to get to the bottom of it, because that's what he does. 

Once there, he and a detective try to piece together the evidence, and fight the bureaucratic red tape that hinders their work. Just as Crash owes so much to La Ronde, Elah calls to mind Courage Under Fire, about the death of a Persian Gulf War veteran, where conflicting stories and the subject of post-traumatic stress disorder are dealt with tangentially. Here, it's more overt, but there is an underlying message of the power of doing nothing, or of passing the buck, even ignoring the buck, taking the easy way out, or as the phrase went in Chinatown, the futility of good intentions, when not backed with action. The characters of In the Valley of Elah do "as little as possible" until provoked, challenged and threatened, and its reach is all-pervasive. In the end there is no one perpetrator, but a constant thread of sins of omission, and therein lies the tragedy.

As he did so much in Crash, Haggis telegraphs too many things, with some pretty obvious set-ups that are none too subtle.** The man just doesn't believe in red herrings, and everything gets used. Maybe that's his buttoned-up-in-25-minutes television writing showing. He's become better at cloaking some, though, hiding them in plain sight until they're trotted out for weighty significance. Some will see his final statement as un-American (which they're looking for, I expect), but a careful reading of what's gone before* reveals exactly what he's saying, and its entirely appropriate and, frankly, completely non-controversial. 

But Haggis seems to invite mis-interpretation. It's what makes him interesting. On top of that, you'll never see better work out of Tommy Lee Jones and Susan Sarandon and their scenes together have a lived-in familiarity and friction that speaks volumes of history and experience. There's some awfully good work in this.

* Easy for me to say, I take notes!

** According to the Addictionary, this is called "five-shadowing"

Tully (2018)

Fight Club for Mommy's
or
"One Life For Yourself/And One for Your Dreams"

Tully is probably several years too late to rescue all the girls who decided to have babies after seeing Juno. If that first Diablo Cody/Jason Reitman film was a Hallmark Card to the wonders and romance of bringing a child into the world (without consequences), then Tully is the follow-up that dashes cold water on the idea—motherhood is work. Hard work. And when it comes down to it, the one person who will be running the biological mill will be the woman who bore it and will continue bearing it.

When we meet Marlo (Charlize Theron), she is in her last week of pregnancy and "densely populated"—a "natural hug-buffer," as she describes it. It's the third for Marlo and her husband Drew (Ron Livingston), not planned, but welcome, and Marlo is a bit tense about it: she's worried about her other two kids, Sarah (Lia Frankland), very reserved for a child, and Jonah (Asher Miles Fallica), who might be autistic, but the best officials at school can label it as is "quirky." The constant care of new baby might squeeze out attention needed for the old ones.

Marlo used to be in the human resources department for a company that makes protein bars. His job is a bit more vague—"I audit organizational paths"—and is swamped with work; he's barely around with just enough time to do homework with the kids, eat dinner, and pass out after blasting zombies on the game console. her job is to negotiate the school system for Emma and her special-needs child.

An uncomfortable dinner with Marlo's brother (Mark Duplass) oroduces an idea for Marlo in the form of a gift—after their third child, brother bought his wife a "night-nurse," a nanny who comes at night, takes care of the baby and lets the parents get some much needed sleep. Marlo is horrified at at the idea—nobody's going to invade her house and take care of the most vulnerable family member. She's sure it's going to turn badly—like a "Lifetime" movie where her family turns against her and she ends up walking with a cane.

But, once daughter Mia is born, life turns into a steady stream of changing, feeding, pumping, and collapsing that director Reitman collects in a savage edited sequence that should be known as "The Monotony of Motherhood Montage." She's burning out...fast.

She decides to try the night-nanny idea, and, one night, Tully arrives. And she is something. 26, rail-thin, educated and positive, she immediately bonds with baby Mia and, after some initial reluctance ("She's...weird") with Marlo. "I'm here to take care of you," says Tully, Marlo's confused: "I thought you were going to take care of the baby." "You're the baby," counters Tully.

Tully's a whiz—so much energy ("You're like Saudi Arabia," says Marlo. "You have an energy surplus."). In the morning, the house is spotlessly clean. a couple days later, cupcakes are made for Jonah's class.

And there are the late-night talks. While Marlo talks about what she's lost, Tully re-inforces what she has—a family, great kids, no matter how hectic—her life is good. Tully, so young, gives Marlo some much-needed perspective in the whirling monotony. And things are fine—until Tully come sin one night and wants to give Marlo a night out...and announces that she has to leave. This devastates Marlo. "I'm just here to bridge a gap," Tully explains. "It's time to move on."

Tully is a bit of a wonder and a welcome return to Reitman's gifts as a director, taking Cody's scenario and making it relatable and just a bit foreign (and Theron's fearless, shame-less performance is another in her impressive ability to fling off her glamour-puss image for the sake of the role). It is a much-needed antidote to the beatific view of Motherhood as something saintly and more down to Earth in showing just how tough a job it is to be the life-support system to an infant that, frankly, can't do anything for itself without the slavishly unwavering care and maintenance imparted by the parent, in a complete 24 hour cycle. A friend summed it up perfectly—"Having kids is the most miraculous thing...that ever sucked."

That suckage makes up a big part of Tully and the extreme mental and physical demands—the survival of which is its own life-miracle—form the spine of the thing. That it tackles the subject clear-eyed, if kaleidoscopically, and delves into the too-often looked-down-upon subject of post-partum depression, makes it a valuable little manual on children and inner-children and the care of both. If sometimes the narrative logic veers off-kilter a bit once or twice (which will elicit some post-showing kvetching, I'm sure), that's okay; like child-raising, The Big Picture is more important than the occasional lapse, and Tully keeps nurturing the more one thinks about it. 

Young Adult

Writer's Cell-Block
or
"He Talked to Me Like I'm Not Pretty!"

The writing-directing team of Diablo Cody and Jason Reitman reunite to present what could be the dark sequel to their sunny, funny Juno. But, instead of examining the student body sub-strata of geeks, we're looking at the sosh's side down there at the very shallow end of the gene pool and the eventual disintegration of High School Dreams.

Trouble is knowing when to wake up. That's the thing about the privileged and the entitled, they never know when the party's done and it's time to go home (and don't even bother asking them to help clean up—that's maid-service). It's the problem of Mavis Gerry (Charlize Theron): her party's over but she's still rocking in the corner, hugging her Maker's Mark bottle, and she picks the perfectly wrong time to go home to Mercury, Minnesota. A writer of moony, self-absorbed children's books (No, no...that's "Y-A's," the contradictory term "Young Adult" novels) about High School life in a series called "Waverly 128", she draws mostly from real life—her own—but with additional snatches of overheard conversations cribbed from teen conversations in fast-food joints and malls.

She need not bother with the latter. Mavis' emotional development is so arrested it should be serving 10 to 20 in "juvie." Her thought processes are still confined to Middling School concerns, even if her behaviors have become more adult in nature, with one marriage behind her and several casual affairs left high and dry, to sleep it off in her bed, and the height of a social life being getting hammered in a bar, anticipating it like a kegger, and her one constant companion an "accessory pet," an animated white hair-ball named Dolce that is left, more or less abandoned, but still capable of the one love Mavis can accept or understand—reverse unconditional. Oh, in our self-absorbed and -absorbed youth culture, she can pass for a grown-up, she's pretty, put-together, and trendy, but on the inside she hasn't graduated, pushing off her writing assignments like she was having to write a term-paper.

In the midst of burbling out her latest teen tome, she gets a message from an old flame (Patrick Wilson) that he and his wife (Elizabeth Reaser) have had their first child...and something in Mavis snaps. She packs up laptop and lap-dog and cruises back to Mercury to recapture her past and maybe new father Buddy Slade and "rescue" him from responsible domesticity, two things she can't fathom or stomach. I mean, have you seen that baby? Ga-ross!

Thing is, she's clueless. Mavis is so stuck in the past rattling around inside her head, you begin to wonder if she might be a little insane, besides insular.  Fortunately, she runs into somebody she perpetually ignored in High School—the guy who had the hall-locker next to her that she never noticed existed, Matt Freehauf (Patton Oswalt, best thing he's ever done), who had his own development beaten out of him ("Oh, yeah, you're the "hate-crime" guy!" blurts Mavis, tactfully and sensitively) by High School toughs who, in a clear case of High School temperance, tolerance and judiciousness, mistakenly assumed he was gay. Matt, with his twisted body, develops a fascination with Mavis and her twisted logic, only half-heartedly trying to suggest that...you know...she might be a little out of sync with the normal, a notion that she scoffs at, before taking another slug and checking herself out in her mirror.

"You...are a piece of work," says Matt, admiringly.  "And you are a piece of shit," comebacks writerly Mavis.

This can not go well, and one wonders where the movie could possibly go and if it can ever be resolved without something being destroyed. The damage being done, though, is to the expectations of the casual movie-goer. Mavis is not your charming debutante "sweet thing" that you'd find in your standard rom-com. She is, as one of her class-hates says, a "psychotic prom-queen bitch," and, though smart and clever, thoroughly unlikable, even when sometimes bordering on the sympathetic. 

Theron is never afraid of tackling this type of character (she did, after all, win an Oscar for her terrifying Aileen Wournos in Monster) or challenging expectations of the audience, and Cody (with Reitman) has a fine time skewering the traditional "woman-pursues-her-soul-mate" brand of romantic fiction. For that, Young Adult, as cringe-inducing and unsettling as it is, deserves an acknowledgement for being a brave film, risking a lot, while also giving a bitch-slap to the Hollywood romance. It left me in an odd place. I didn't thoroughly enjoy Young Adult, but, at the same time, I recognized that the makers were making a thoroughly professional statement...or at least an obscene gesture...to the too-easy way that love is presented in the movies, something I've railed against myself. This isn't love. It's selfish obsession.  

And Mavis, like so many of the protagonists in Reitman's films, is an outlier of Society, playing by her own rules, but, as opposed to the others, she reaches no self-awareness, and is absolutely clueless as to where the goal-post is (knowing Mavis, she probably would pick a random spot, easy to reach, and declare it 'good"). One is hesitant to praise or applaud such accomplishments, when the impulse is to show it the door and kick it in the ass on the way out.