catjoescreed

Young Adult is a nasty, shallow, unlikable movie about a nasty, shallow, unlikable character who ultimately discovers that nasty, shallow unlikability are just tickety-boo. Patton Oswalt is good, though. And so is the dog.

Look, I'm as bored as anybody else with stories that resolve everything with a shiny bright bow at the end. And much of the plot is just as realistic as you'd want it to be. It's just that final message, as voiced by the sister and as embraced by the main character, that she's better than anyone else.

If nothing else, before this thing wrapped up, somebody should have turned old Mavis in for animal neglect, because she left that dog alone in the hotel room day after day after day, and even overnight, and never once took it outside to pee.

These cannot be spoilers when the movie itself was already spoiled by the writer.

I'm a huge Ricky Gervais fan, so I really had high hopes for this movie. It's a clever premise, after all, and has a first-rate cast. The religion bit didn't bother me the way it bothered some people; I could easily see that as being precisely how religion came about.

What did bother me was the fact that a guy we're supposed to care about has set his sights on an extremely shallow woman. For awhile there I was hoping that he would sit down with the friend who set him up with this woman in the first place and, as happens in so many trite romances, eventually realize that it was this other woman he really loved.

But, no; we don't even get a trite romance out of this. What we get is a man who eventually wins the woman who has absolutely nothing going for her except that she's pretty. And, when we stop to wonder precisely why this man might love a woman who has absolutely nothing going for her except that she's pretty, we realize that he loves her because, and only because, of her looks.

Making this a story about a very shallow man who falls in love with a very shallow woman, believes, in sort of incel-creepiness, that he deserves her simply because he wants her, and eventually wins her.

How disappointing.