Monday, January 2, 2012

Movie: Young Adult

Young Adult proved a most excellent start to the 2012 movie watching year.

It is delightfully mean and wonderfully egalitarian in thumbing its nose at convention. Yes, the main character is horrible, and the viewer smiles at her humiliations. But the people in the small town she escapes from are really boring and small, just as she thinks they are, so while they can teach her a lesson or two about letting go of the past, they cannot do more than that. My favorite line comes when the main character is talking to her mother about her failed first marriage. Her mother still has a wedding picture up and the main character wants her to take it down. Her mother says something to the effect that "but the wedding wasn't a failure; remember the tiramisu?" That sort of thing could make anyone want to run away to Minneapolis.

A.O. Scott's positive NYT review here.

Highly recommended.

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