Directed by: Jason Reitman
Starring: Charlize Theron, Patton Oswalt, Patrick Wilson
Rated: R
94 minutes

Charlize Theron stars in “Young Adult.”   (Courtesy photo)

I had high hopes for "Young Adult," the new movie from the directing-writing team of Jason Reitman and Diablo Cody. Their last collaboration, "Juno," was a huge success in 2007, thanks to its energy and quirkiness, so I was expecting something similar here. Suffice it to say, I left the theater a little disappointed.

Mavis Gary (Charlize Theron, "Monster"), recently divorced and working on ghostwriting another crummy young adult novel, finds out her high school boyfriend, Buddy Slade (Patrick Wilson, "Watchmen"), and his wife have had their first baby.

Still bitter about their separation and very conscious of her biological clock, Mavis sets off for Mercury, Minn., her rural hometown, in the hopes of winning Buddy back (yes, even though he's married). When she arrives, she runs into a former classmate of hers, Matt Freehauf (Patton Oswalt, "Ratatouille"), a disabled man whose life since high school has consisted of living with his sister and bitterly watching his able-bodied peers get on with their lives.

Mavis begins to employ various acts of flirtation in order to get Buddy to rediscover his attraction to her, but her attempts keep coming up short. Matt becomes her go-to friend, with whom she can discuss her personal problems and, more importantly, get drunk (she is, as we see very early on, an incorrigible alcoholic). As her attempts to get Buddy back continue to go unnoticed, Mavis finds herself wondering if she's willing to put up with the small-town atmosphere and complacent people of Mercury in order to get her man.

I'm not sure what bugged me more about "Young Adult," the script or the direction. They're both good, but they don't work together well. Diablo Cody, who seems to have a thing for writing about women who don't know how to deal with babies, delivers a lively script, even if it is predictable and sends a confusingly close-minded message. And Reitman directs with his typical calm, indie movie assuredness. But they aren't in synch; the movie feels slow when it should be fast, it doesn't make us laugh the way it's meant to, and we're not sure if we're living in an eccentric world or a realistic one. It's as if Reitman never decided whether he wanted to make this a sincere movie with ridiculous moments or a ridiculous movie with sincere moments.

That uncertainty comes through in the performances. Theron is a talented actress, and her performance is a good one, but it could be so much better if she weren't awkwardly halfway between brutal humor and realistic desperation. Wilson is charming as Buddy, which he is supposed to be, but Oswalt's Matt is a far more interesting character. Thankfully, Oswalt gets his deserved amount of time in the spotlight, but unfortunately Mavis's undivided attention is directed towards Buddy. Normally I'd say we just have a protagonist whose actions are frustrating, but I'm frustrated with the script instead, since, quite simply, Mavis never learns anything from her mistakes.

This is just one of those movies where you're not sure how to react. I don't know if a good script was poorly treated or if a bad script was dolled up and its author's reputation used as a buoy. Frankly, I think there were major problems in each stage of production, starting with the movie's weird underlying message: Cities are better than rural settings in just about every way. This is, at least, the gist of the pep talk Mavis eventually gets, and, somehow, this is enough to motivate her.

There is a deeper message about what it means to be mature somewhere in "Young Adult," but I don't know where it is or what it is, only that we're supposed to think Mavis is bridging the gap between adolescent and adult somewhere along the way. For all its flaws, though, "Young Adult" is still a good movie. It just had the potential to be great, and that's what's frustrating.

Danny Eisenberg is a 2010 graduate of the Bromfield School and is currently a student at the University of Pennsylvania.