It’s a little tough narrowing down a role of Charlize Theron’s in this decade, given that Mad Max: Fury Road and Atomic Blonde are also among my list for this project. But I picked Young Adult because Theron was just so sharp and mean in playing this petty woman still mentally stuck in high school twenty years later, still seeing herself as the hot prom queen, and when her old high school boyfriend, now married and expecting a child, invites her to a backyard party in their hometown, she is dead-set on stealing him back and proving to everyone that she’s still hot.
It’s this messed-up, mean-spirited, insecure high school mentality that Theron plays so well with her stunning looks and the stinkeye that she gives to anyone she deems beneath her. She assesses every woman she meets by just staring her up and down, internally judging her for her clothes, hair, makeup, or anything just so she can say to herself, “Yeah, I’m prettier than her.”
And the object of her affection (Patrick Wilson), is just so naïvely friendly to her, welcoming her back like she’s an old friend instead of his ex, and is blissfully unaware that she’s there to blow up his marriage and try to just snatch him from his settled domestic life, like to just pick up from high school as if nobody else has moved on. It’s a great contrast to her pettiness that he’s just so nice and trusting, while a lot of the other women see through her schemes and are at arm’s length with her.
With Patton Oswalt as a former bullied classmate who provides an uglier reality to how much high school sucks for most people, Young Adult, written by Diablo Cody, is just a sharp and dead-on film that gives a sympathetic perspective on a really small-minded and immature character.
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