Reviews

This film is a mess. I don't know where to start.

I can accept a tragically flawed protagonist. However, I can't deal with a protagonist and other important characters behaving in ways that completely lack verisimilitude.

Let's start with the dog-in-the-bag-at-the-hotel-front-desk gag. Mavis, the protagonist, wants to sneak her toy dog into her hotel room so she places the dog in a piece of luggage and places the bag on the front desk as she deals with the front desk clerk. For intended (but failed) comic effect, the dog noticeably fidgets. Why didn't she leave the dog in the car and sneak it into the room after she made the room arrangements? When Mavis is in the small town she grew up in, she visits a local bar and meets a high school classmate, played by Patton Oswalt, who had been the victim of a particularly vicious high school hate crime that partially disabled him. Despite the fact that it is mentioned that the attack garnered national media attention for the small town, Mavis has a hard time remembering him even though both were classmates a mere 20 years ago. Worse, she is clueless to the fact that his locker had been next to hers. While her character is supposed to be self-centered, this is an obliviousness that approaches solipsism and completely lacks the ring of truth.

A stock character, Mavis's wheelchair-bound cousin, is introduced for no other reason than a lame attempt at edgy and cynical humor in which the disabled Oswalt character bemoans the fact that Mavis' cousin is a more likable disabled person. There was a huge set-up but the punch line fizzled. The seams in the script are showing.

It is credible that a self-absorbed and disturbed character would go back to her hometown and attempt to steal her high school boyfriend from his wife, even though the inciting incident is that she found out about the birth of the boyfriend's first child. What lacks plausibility is how the other characters--the former beau, his wife, as well as Mavis' parents who are still in touch with the old boyfriend--respond to Mavis' bizarre behavior. Only in a really odd alternate universe would they passively allow Mavis to inject herself into their lives to the extent that she did. Why did the old boyfriend and his wife tolerate Mavis brazenly imposing herself on them and their family? I suppose the answer is that had they acted in a rational way and politely but assertively taken Mavis aside and told her that her behavior was raising some serious questions, Young Adult would be a 25-minute feature film.

The irrationality of the characters in Young Adult reminds me of another overrated film, The Celebration.

Mini-spoilers within.

The Real Cancun is a faux cinema verite look at a dozen college-aged partiers who go to Cancun for spring break. Watching this film leads me to the following conclusions: 1) Partying is fun; 2) Watching other people party is not fun; and 3) Shelling out nine bucks to watch other people party is pathetic. Fortunately, I didn't have to pay to see it because it was an advance screening. The main problem is that if you watched the film to see the party scene in Cancun, you would only get an inkling because the film focused on the goings-on of the dozen subjects-none of whom I found interesting (example: a young woman tells a guy that once she caught her boyfriend with her best friend; he responded that he never experienced anything that intense in his life; if that's true, it's time for him to go out and experience life). Small talk permeates the film. I can hear small talk on the street.

Even for the type of person into the cheesy Girls Gone Wild tapes, this movie is a disappointment. There is a steamy wet t-shirt contest early in the film but that's about it. The subjects start to pair off. A guy and a gal get busy under a blanket in a room with the night vision camera rolling-at breakfast next morning, the guy treats her as if she had SARS-that was cold. One final thought about The Real Cancun: there are a dozen college students and not one of them was smoking weed. What gives there? This is probably the first film that has Snoop Dogg in it in which there is no weed-smoking. This film is to documentaries what Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is to musicals.