Young Adult

Young Adult, 2011, 4 ½ stars

Coming of (middle) age

Young Adult, or The Graduate, Part II

Exclusive to MeierMovies, January 17, 2026

“Don’t you know that love conquers all? Haven’t you seen The Graduate?”

And so goes the bar confession from middle-aged Minnesotan Mavis Gary to her new best friend, Matt. She hasn’t seen him in 20 years but, after multiple Makers Marks, finds no problem revealing her scheme to win back her high school boyfriend, Buddy, and free him from the tragic bondage of a happy marriage and beautiful baby.

Mavis, an author of young-adult fiction, is living young-adult nonfiction. She’s just 37 years old, so her mid-life crisis is coming early, spurred on by a recent divorce, the cancellation of the book series she is ghost-writing and the ghosts of her youth. And when she learns of the arrival of her old beau’s newborn, something in her snaps. Surely he must be unhappy, she tells herself, if only because I am. And surely he must still want me, for he was once a true love of mine.

But Scarborough Fair is nowhere to be found. Neither is Elaine Robinson’s Berkeley. Instead, we get fictional Mercury, Minnesota. But Mavis finds her hometown an unhappy stranger. Sure, it has a new sports bar and a new KenTacoHut. But above all else it holds heartbreak. And the saddest part is that everyone sees it coming except Mavis. Turns out she should have spent less time writing YA fiction and more time reading Thomas Wolfe. You can’t go home again.

In the hands of writer Diablo Cody, director Jason Reitman and actors Charlize Theron (Mavis), Patton Oswalt (Matt) and Patrick Wilson (Buddy), Young Adult is arguably, alternatingly, the funniest and saddest film of 2011 while simultaneously being the most deceptively profound. It’s a coming-of-age tale for grownups, a requiem for lost loves who are never completely lost, and a mixtape of songs that remind you of your ex. And Mavis chases it all down with quaffed bourbon shots while nervously pulling hairs from her otherwise cutely coiffed head.

Countering Mavis’s delusions is the down-to-earth, biting realism of Matt. A vicious attack two decades earlier left him with crooked legs and a crooked penis. Unable to make love and, at least in his own mind, be loved, he nevertheless remains uncrooked in his unlikely support of Mavis because, as he tells her, “Guys like me are born loving women like you.”

Despite writer Buck Henry’s jokes, a sequel to The Graduate never got filmed. But maybe Young Adult is a spiritual sequel, 44 years later and without the happy ending (if The Graduate’s finale is indeed happy). Perhaps it’s a follow-up for middle-agers, depressants, clingers-on and the Bens who never got their Elaines. Because life doesn’t have a happy ending. Because Mavis, Buddy, Elaine and Ben will all eventually forget, and be forgotten.

So too we, plucked from the world and cast away, like existential trichotillomania.

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For more information on the movie, visit IMDB and Wikipedia.