When bad is best

Dir: Jason Reitman

With: Charlize Theron, Patrick Wilson, Patton Oswalt

Running time: 93 minutes

A TRIO of four-star releases are competing for your cinema buck this week, as well as all those films which now come with large gold letters telling you how many Oscar nominations they have. Out tomorrow are Roman Polanski's Carnage, a comedy of middle-class bad manners, the thriller Martha Macy May Marlene, and Jason Reitman's Young Adult. But it is Reitman's bleak comedy drama that receives the star billing here, because when it comes to being bad, the heroine of this Diablo Cody-scripted movie is wickedly good.

Cody and Reitman worked together on Juno, the hip and savvy tale of a teen mum-to-be. With Juno and her last film, Jennifer's Body, Cody has shown a talent for creating female characters who are gobby, gabby and in full, heads-a-poppin' rant mode, can make Bette Davis and Joan Crawford look like Julie Andrews and Snow White.

Here, it is Charlize Theron (Monster, In the Valley of Elah, The Road) doing the honours and acting out the dishonour as Mavis Gary, a writer of books for young adults. On the page, Mavis commands the fictional world of Waverley Prep high school. In reality, she is a 37-year-old train wreck in trackie bottoms.

Recently divorced and living in a rented flat in Minneapolis, she is dragging her feet, teenager-style, on writing what will be the last in the Waverley Prep series. At a time when she is losing or has lost everything else, Mavis is understandably reluctant to let go of this other world.

Until, that is, she gets an email from someone in her old home town. Her ex-boyfriend and his wife have just had a baby, and wouldn't it be lovely if Mavis could join them for the baby shower? Not since the wicked witch turned up at Sleeping Beauty's christening has any guest been less suitable.

Instead of regarding this as a chance to go back home, recharge and reconnect with small-town values, as might happen in another, more conventional film, Mavis sees the invitation as a green light to reclaim the ex-boyfriend in question, Buddy, played by Patrick Wilson.

That's about it for plot in what is essentially a character study of a woman in danger of losing the plot. It is up to Reitman, Cody, Theron and the remainder of the cast to do the rest, and each does an ace job of bringing together a movie that is hardly mould-breaking but is smart, funny and daring.

Theron's character is a more rounded and believable creation than Juno MacGuff. There was something about the teenage mother-to-be that was too sassy to be true for someone in her vulnerable position. The head on those young shoulders was much older than was credible. With Theron's Mavis, however, the age and attitude fit perfectly. Mavis doesn't have to pretend to be world-weary; she is.

After Juno, Reitman continued his track record as a director who gets the best out of female characters with Up In The Air, the tale of personnel people flying from town to town laying off workers. Reitman gave such light and depth to Vera Farmiga and Anna Kendrick's characters the actresses almost took the picture from George Clooney (both women, and Clooney, were Oscar-nominated).

Here, he broadens out the tale to give Patrick Wilson, as the new dad trying to do the right thing, another chance to shine. There is a lot of attention paid, too, to Patton Oswalt, who plays Mavis's new best friend as she lays a fiendish plan to get her old beau back. And just as in every film of note lately, there's even a dog, this one called Dolce, to coo over.

But this is first and last Mavis's gig, and Theron relishes every minute of her screen time. Mavis really is a horror. A cynic, a misanthrope, a bully, an all-out nightmare. You'll laugh at her observations on life, the universe and everything, but chances are you'll also gasp in an "I can't believe she just said that" way. But Cody gives her just enough flashes of humanity and vulnerability to make the audience continue to care about her, and Theron uses the material expertly, adding lots of physical comedy dash – the slouch, the pout, the skirt fiddle – to the verbal flashes.

As with Juno, there is a point at which you might start to doubt the Mavis character. But Cody, Reitman and Theron are having too much fun with her to stop now, and it's best to go along for the ride.

Cody has written her own modern fairy tale, one with a twist in that it's about a bad girl who wants life to be good but she can't seem to quite crack the code. It's all horribly, wonderfully complicated, with Mavis the kind of character who is as fascinating as she is maddening. What a coup for Theron.

FEATURE – PAGE 18