This young adult is not so grown up

THIS romantic comedy-drama, better than average, is a grown-up movie with some interesting ideas.

Young Adult

THERE are, as we are told, only a small number of basic movie plots.

This point was emphasised for me when I recently watched Man-proof, a minor MGM movie from 1937 in which Myrna Loy is so much in love with Walter Pidgeon that she can't believe he's happy with bride Rosalind Russell and continues to pursue him.

Flash forward 75 years to Young Adult, the latest screenplay from talented 33-year-old former stripper Diablo Cody, who won an Oscar for Juno and who created the television series United States of Tara. The film is directed by Juno's Jason Reitman, and it has the same basic theme as Man-proof.

Mavis Gray (Charlize Theron) is 37, lives in Minneapolis (presumably a joke in itself, since her ambitions should have landed her in New York or LA), ghost writes Young Adult books, has a failed marriage behind her, indulges in TV dinners and unsatisfying one-night stands - and is certain her high school sweetheart Buddy (Patrick Wilson) must still love her. She's so certain that, despite learning that he's just become a father, she decides to head back to her home town of Mercury, Minnesota, where she checks into the local motel accompanied by her dog, and sets about rekindling that old, cherished love affair.

Everyone, except Mavis, can see Buddy is perfectly happy with his wife, Beth (Elizabeth Reaser), a drummer in an all-girl band, and consequently Mavis risks making a fool of herself. Undeterred, she sticks around, hanging out with Matt (Patton Oswalt, very good), a sad man who was her contemporary at school and who's never fully recovered from being bashed by a gang of homophobes who mistakenly thought he was gay.

On one level, Mavis is a success story: she succeeded in getting out of the stifling atmosphere of the small town where she grew up, succeeded in establishing herself in the city (well, in a city) and lives in her own apartment as a free, independent woman.

The veneer of success is a shallow one, however, and Mavis is clearly desperately unhappy. Not that she doesn't deserve to be taken down a peg or two. She's neglectful of her parents, patronising towards people who, like Matt, she considers to be beneath her ("I like your decor. Is it shabby chic?") and delusional in her determination that Buddy couldn't possibly prefer home-town girl Beth to her.

Theron brings substance to the character of this basically unfulfilled woman who can't admit that her shallow bitchiness is the cause of her lonely existence. Young Adult is, unlike its protagonist, tough and uncompromising.