(MA) Directed by Jason Reitman
Remember Juno, the feisty teenager with a predatory attitude? Diablo Cody, who won an Oscar for the Juno script, has written another brilliantly dark comedy and teams up with Juno’s director, Jason Reitman. Thirty-seven year old Mavis Gray (Charlize Theron) has escaped her small town of Mercury, Minnesota and had some success as a writer of Young Adult fiction in Minneapolis.
She decides to return to her hometown to rekindle romance with high school sweetheart Buddy (Patrick Wilson), who just happens to be happily married with a young baby. Mavis looks fantastic but exists at the level of the teenagers she writes for and “doesn’t know shit about being an adult”. Her saving grace is Matt (a brave performance by Patton Oswalt), who used to have the locker next to hers. Still carrying the horrific scars from a homophobic bashing, he is the village outcast who possesses all the wisdom.
Lezly Herbert
