Pedestrian film reviewer Neha Potalia and co-host of Pedestrian’s podcast ‘The Walkthough’ Sophie Braham went to see the new Diablo Cody film ‘Young Adult’. They discussed their thoughts over Gchat.
N: So… ‘Young Adult’….
S: YOUNG ADULT EH? This is quite suspenseful – I’m excited to hear what your lil’ head was thinking the whole time
N: And same here!! I wish I had liked it more.
S: REALLY?!?!?! COS I LOVED IT (j/k)
N: I thought it started out quite promising, I was totally on board but……. yeah…… I was so unsatisfied when it was over. It felt like it was full of cliches that just kinda made it lack a depth or a complexity- that the story really needed?
S: OK that’s interesting. What were you on board with at the start – what was it about the set-up that made you think ‘I’m with you, Diablo Cody… go on….’
N: To be honest, it was probably about 10 mins- I saw Kendra and the Kardashians on TV, I saw her hungover sculling Diet Coke, I heard her singing along to Teenage Fanclub and I was like “Cute, let’s do this”. How did you feel at the start?
S: I was completely won over by the details. Diablo Cody writes a good first 10 pages! You totally got a sense of this character, Mavis, and exactly where she was at in her somewhat grim life. P.s: who’s Kendra? That cultural reference totally passed me by.
N: She was the first blonde on the TV in Mavis’ apartment- originally one of Hef’s girls from Playboy Mansion.
S: One of Hef’s is she, there ya go.
N: What did you think about her profession as a ‘Young Adult’ author (not writer, as she reminded us a few times in the movie)?
S: Oh I’m glad you brought that up. In a very uncharacteristic move for an American movie, they actually didn’t lead up to a big reveal where she spelt out EXACTLY she meant with that insistent author/writer distinction. I think this movie was trying to be about a particular craft/schlocky genre instead of a tortured artist struggling to write their Infinite Jest. This character had no artistic aspirations, and her work was the product of the lowest-common denominator culture she immersed herself in. The repetition of the Kardashians throughout was a nice, winky touch.
N: I thought it was quite outlandish. Not because she wasn’t a ‘cliche’ female writer and not because her life is a mess in the movie- any adult can go through that in any profession. But more because she displayed such a total lack of compassion and basically any clue about human behaviour on so many occasions… that, well it made it hard to imagine her writing a heartfelt and enjoyable piece of fiction with any insight.
S: TOTALLY. I mean the whole movie was constructed around this neat parallel between a Young Adult writer and a literal young adult, a woman with a prolonged adolescence. I mean, I guess it’s a good pun? But I don’t believe that anyone interested about writing and girls would have such an undercooked psyche and lack of self-awareness. I just think that character would have a different job! Or perhaps I’m being naive about Ann M. Martin – maybe she was a hideous mess too.
N: Right! The way that she was portrayed as being in high school (with the story of her spending the whole time looking in the mirror in her locker), I just think “well writer’s tend to watch others not themselves”. But maybe I’m being too romantic about that/ over-thinking it. But i definitely would have seen her doing something else. Like working for e!channel or being a personal shopper. I guess, as you said though to show us how she is ‘living a fantasy’.
S: I kept thinking – how did she get this job? Did she have to submit sample chapters… was she good at English in high school? I hope they make a prequel – the post-college job-hunting years of Mavis Gary! (I hope they don’t.) I also felt like the part of the movie where we heard, in voiceover, the final book in the teen series Mavis has been writing – was just not engaging at all. I guess it was successful at setting the mood in terms of how dumb the teen series was- but I felt like it was a wasted opportunity to make a genuinely gripping story within a story. The Kardashian’s clips did a better job at that.
N: Totally agree. I was bored with that narration. So we should talk about Patton Oswalt. How did you like him?
S: Patton Oswalt was great! No arguments from me! Really enjoyed his character and his performance, and really got a kick out of his and Charlize’s interaction. You?
N: Yeah I thought he was great. I loved his delivery for lines like “You’re fucking mentally ill”. I guess his character is basically there to humanise the whole movie in a way since Charlize is so despicable so much of the time. I thought he was great at it.
S: Have you seen Greenberg?
N: Yeah, how come?
S: It reminded me of that in terms of the utter-unlikeability of the protagonist. But you do get flickers of humanity through the way people can manage to connect, regardless of how impossible someone insists on being. Like Greta Gerwig and Ben Stiller DO connect, and so do Charlize and Patton. And it’s sweet to see it happen.
N: Oh absolutely. I thought the film had some really nice, genuinely sincere moments. And Charlize is mostly unlikable but there are still moments where you connect with her character. The part where her ex-boyfriend’s wife’s band plays ‘their’ song. (‘The Concept’ by Teenage Fanclub which she sings on repeat on her drive to see her ex) The look on Charlize’s face – it’s like everything just dawned on her and the ‘fight’ began at that moment. The band playing that song and her having the “this isn’t our thing any more” feeling. I thought that really hit the nail on the head.
But speaking of Charlize’s despicable character… the scene at the – was it a baby shower? Or a christening or whatever? Her big showdown in that scene- the two girls next to me and I actually physically covered our mouthes in shock which I thought was funny.
S: That scene totally reminded me of Bridesmaids. (What a sophisticated grasp of the filmic canon I have!)
N: Oh yeah, it basically was ‘that’ scene from Bridesmaids. I liked with this movie how the ‘nostalgic’ high school, ye olde days were not the 80s like we’re so used to watching but the 90s! The 90s are totally old school now. Patton’s t-shirts, the music, the plaid shirts of the band…
S: yes- nice observation. The parameters of retro are a’changin. We didn’t stick around for the ‘no animals were harmed in the making of this movie’ disclaimer at the end, but I’m not sure it would’ve made it in anyhow, Charlize’s treatment of the dog was a little gratutitous, right?
N: That poor dog! But oh another couple of touches that I liked were the realistic manicure scenes (actual skin cutting, not just nail painting) and also that Mavis has trichotillomania (the hair thing)- yep I know the name because it’s something I had for a short time!
S: LOL about the hair thing! What exactly is it? I wanted to Wikipedia that shit as I was sitting in the movie. I also liked how that was a detail, not a major plot point.
N: Pulling strands of your hair out!!!! HAHA it’s a real thing.
S: But on that Bridesmaids thing – those big blowouts do occasionally feel a little automated, don’t they.
N: There’s also a scene like that in Melancholia. You just kinda go “Really? Would you really say that at that time in front of all those people?” Maybe people do act like that IRL though and we just don’t know it…..
S: We move in passive aggressive circles. Ok so I’m wonrdering, did it make you think about your life in any way?
N: It made me think about high school politics a bit and the ‘popular’ group or whatever. But more than that, not really. Did it make you?
S: Well. It didn’t really feel like a high school movie to me (Which was a shame, love a good locker scene). But I did feel like it had something to say about the whole Happy vs. Complicated prism in which a certain type of person views other people’s lives. I don’t know what exactly it was saying – maybe just that it’s probs a bit of a fallacy/trap to look at the world that way.
N: I wish it was ‘Awkward’– the movie instead.
S: Fuck. CAN THEY MAKE AWKWARD THE MOVIE ASAP? It also made me feel urgently, that it’s important to be a good citizen. Seriously, she was just a terrible fucking citizen/member of the community.
N: It also made me think “God I could kill for a Makers Mark right now” (nooooo)
S: Ha. Love it. (Not really – just an affectation I got from watching Louie!). But it’s good to see that Diablo Cody’s writing style has chilled-the-fuck out since ‘Juno’. The characters say stuff that rings true and is actually funny, without shoving it down your throat.
N: I know. I thought ‘Juno’ wasn’t great. It’s like indie ‘Gilmore Girls’ (and I don’t mind ‘Gilmore Girls’ at the right time) but nobody talks like that.
S: Though- who are we to say what we’d be like if we grew up in Stars Hollow with sassy Lorelei Gilmore for a Mom?
N: I thought the saddest line was when she said to Patton Oswalt’s sister “You’re good here” after she’d just been saying how big of a piece of shit their small town was. That broke MY HEART!!!!!!!
S: Yeah that was a killer moment. Very intricate circles of delusion. So as you know I’m make big on costuming/styling. I thought they went to herculean effort to Charlize Theron look like a grub. All the other characters just looked like actors on a movie screen. But Charlize was walking around visible pores covered by foundation in the wrong shade. And crispy yellow hair. I thought she looked exactly like Katherine Heigl throughout, which is to say, much less pretty than Charlize Theron. I just thought that was a really good trick for helping us see her in the way the other characters would – instead of one step removed like an audience member watching a Hollywood babe.
N: Yeah you’re so right about her styling- it was so dead on. Like the first night when she’s ‘dressed up’ going out with her studded everything and chain bag and it’s just all so right/ wrong. I thought the INSTANT AFFAIR plot point sort of disconnects Charlize’s character from the audience. The idea that she would fathom stealing an ex-high school flame from his wife and newborn. Like in relationship terms, it’s the lowest of the low. Apart from what Billy Crudup did to Mary Louise Parker……….
S: Ha! Or what Woody Allen did to Mia Farrow. Yes – the overall story didn’t particularly move/interest me, but the details and the performances are really rewarding. I think Charlize did an ace job at capturing the ‘on/off’ mode of someone on the prowl. She was so disgustingly shimmery when flirting with Buddy, and so droll and dark when bonding with Patton. And I liked Patton’s point about how guys like him are born in love with girls like her. It is possible to find counter-examples to that or whatever, but I think it made a lot of sense in that moment.
N: Yeah, that contrast! and also like someone obsessed. I like the realisticness of- even after the fated baby shower thing and the night when she sleeps with patton, she comes down and the first thing she says to his sister is do you know (insert ex’s name here) his wife? what’s she like? i thought that was super realistic. like you don’t just STOP thinking things. even when you’ve disgraced yourself and can’t redeem yourself. your mind won’t just switch off.
S: Excellent point. I also feel like the ‘ol Diabs is really skilled at endings. They feel satisfying without being conclusive or neat in any way.
N: I think I was left a bit flat at the end. probably because of the preceeding 20 mins or so rather than the end itself. I wanted a bit more.
S: You wanted more? Then do you want to hear what happened to me after the movie? I had my own little Mavis Gary meltdown!
N: um YES.
S: WELL post-screening, because supermarkets are my place of worship, I decided to have a quick spin around Woolworths Metro. I wasn’t finding anything particularly inspiring so I just got usual wartime rations – blueberries, nuts and other bullshit from the Macro Section. Anyway, I had arrogantly decided to forgo a basket and before I knew it, the various plastic packets were interacting with each other and an entire punnet of blueberries tumbled out of my arms and across the whole surface area of the first floor of woolworths metro.
N: :’
S: I’m sure there’s some part of me that would’ve loved to have walked away, but I wasn’t even able to access it cos too many people saw it happen. And there was definitely a large part of me that wanted a Woolworths staff member to come and rescue me.
N: But they didn’t?! :-O
S: They did not. But on the plus side I did feel like I was in one of the ‘I’ve hit rock bottom’ scenes from Bridesmaids/Young Adult. Only instead of any spirited yelling/stamping on blueberries,. I picked up every single fucking blueberry in real time. I guess my life is more in the great tradition of a tedious realist Australian drama.
N: Except for Charlize it would be cans of diet coke busting open.
S: LOL/The End.
