Except for a couple great scenes near the end, Young Adult doesn’t quite work, which is excruciating to say about a film with Patton Oswalt in it. Written by Diablo Cody, directed by Jason Reitman, and starring Charlize Theron, who won an Oscar for daring to play ugly, it has all the right ingredients. Up in the Air gets better every time I watch it, there was always a solid movie in Juno once you dug through the kitschy language and rightful backlash, and it should go without saying that Patton Oswalt is the best chubby sidekick a protagonist could have. But Young Adult gets caught in an awkward middle ground, where it can’t seem to decide whether it wants to defy genre like Up in the Air or be a full-on comedic romp like Bad Santa. It’s too stereotypical to be poignant, and not enough laughs for escapism.

Charlize Theron plays Mavis Gary, a hard-drinking party girl (transitioning uneasily towards a party lady) who writes young adult fiction under a pseudonym when she’s not too hungover or watching reality TV (you’d be surprised at how many friends I have with this very occupation — I assume Diablo Cody probably does too). One day, in the middle of Kardashians and Diet Coke binge, Mavis (OH THE QUIRKY NAMES) gets an email from an ex, (BUDDY SLADE, SMALL-TOWN LEGEND) inviting her to a baby shower. Jealous of his stable life and seeming happiness, she gets it in her head that she’s going to leave Minneapolis (“the mini apple!”) with her pomeranian and mini Cooper in tow, and head back to Mercury, Minnesota to rescue her ex from his life of boring domesticity.

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After the jump, I’ve got the trailer for Young Adult, the new film from Diablo Cody and Jason Reitman. A lot of people still like to sh*t on Diablo Cody, and I can kiiinda see why, but I thought her recent response to Bobcat Goldthwait was dead on (“Dear Bobcat: Juno is my growly voice.”). Also, Jason Reitman rules.

Theron plays Mavis Gary, a writer of teen literature who returns to her small hometown to relive her glory days and attempt to reclaim her happily married high school sweetheart (Patrick Wilson). When returning home proves more difficult than she thought, Mavis forms an unusual bond with a former classmate (Patton Oswalt) who hasn’t quite gotten over high school, either.

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Maybe I’m slow on the uptake, but when I saw Up in the Air, I didn’t realize those montages of people talking about what they were going to do after losing their jobs were from actual, fired people and not actors.  I guess I’m just used to actors speaking directly into the camera, documentary-style, from shows like The Office and Modern Family, and from my webcam chats with young Thai boys.  But, uh… yeah.  They were real.  From Daily Beast:

If the individuals who are told they’re being laid-off in Jason Reitman’s film Up in the Air look genuinely devastated, that’s because they’re not acting. Rather than cast actors for those scenes, Reitman instead cast real people who had recently lost their jobs.
To find them, he placed ads in local newspapers in two cities that were hit hard by the Great Recession: Detroit and St. Louis. During auditions, people were asked what it was like to lose their job in a horrible economy, and to reenact their response to being fired, or, if they preferred, to act out how they wished they had reacted.

The Daily Beast does updates on six people from the film.  Out of the six they profile, who were fired from HR, auto companies, ad firms, and otherwise, only three have since found work, which is sort of depressing, and most have sob stories like: Read the rest of this entry »

(“Dude, what’d he say?”  “I dunno, I think he wants you to stuff your wife in a backpack.”  “Why?”  “Because she’s too heavy.”)

Up in the Air is the kind of movie that sneaks up on you.  I reported the award nominations, I felt the buzz, but I could never figure how a film about a yuppie asswipe trying to rack up frequent flier miles could ever be more than a mild amusement — even if he was played by a handsome all-American with great hair and a voice that could charm the panties off a Jehova’s Witness.  Even forty minutes into the movie, the most complimentary description that came to mind was “slick.”  But sure enough, by the time the credits rolled, there I was with my panties around my ankles.  (so to speak)*

In Jason Reitman’s third feature as a director (after Thank You For Smoking, Juno), George Clooney plays Ryan Bingham, a corporate consultant who specializes in firing people and revels in the kind of single-serving lifestyle that makes Edward Norton’s Fight Club character pray for death.  The ladies in his life are Vera Farmiga (The Departed) — fellow traveler, kindred spirit, F buddy; Anna Kendrick (Twilight), the snot-nosed Cornell grad who wants to lower company costs by having Clooney do his firings via video chat (a proposal his boss Jason Bateman is seriously considering); and the two sisters he never sees, one of whom is about to marry Danny McBride (the horror).

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(That Zach Galifianakis would show up to my work and pour bleach in my boss’s coffee was always a dream of mine)

I posted the teaser a while back, and now here’s the full trailer for Up in the Air, from director Jason Reitman (Juno), starring George Clooney and Vera Farmiga.  Hey, am I the only one who constantly misreads her last name as “farm nigga”?  Wait, is that racist?  …I should just drop this, shouldn’t I. It also stars the ever delightful JK Simmons, and has at least a cameo from Zach Galifianakis. I like the director and the cast, but the trailer doesn’t do much to make the story seem interesting.

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