Film Review – Young Adult

With “Juno” and “Jennifer’s Body,” screenwriter Diablo Cody made a name for herself playing with paper dolls, dreaming up puckered dialogue for cartoon characters, hitting the industry with a pungent gimmick in serious need of refining. With “Young Adult,” Cody reveals astonishing maturation, unbuckling her belt of cutesy behaviors to sculpt a rough ode to the cocoon of extended adolescence, embodied to sheer perfection by a disheveled, Diet Coke-swilling Charlize Theron. “Young Adult” is a dark comedy with a few bellylaughs, but it clicks beautifully as an examination of a diseased thirtysomething mind enabled to a point of no return, fearlessly returning to her roots with a plan to sort out her idea of unfinished business. The writing is frighteningly spotless and the direction is refreshingly low-wattage, creating a tonally risky picture that’s deliciously mean yet crookedly insightful in a peculiar Codyesque way. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com