“So Dark, It’s Black”

“Hotshots” looks at a movie!

Young Adult, because of the successes this year of Bad Teacher and Horrible Bosses, could have been called Bad Graduate or Horrible Alumna.

Instead, it is called Young Adult, because the protagonist, Mavis Gary, is the ghostwriter of a series of young-adult novels, but also because even though she is 37, she acts as if she were still in high school, where she was the popular prom queen.

The film was directed by Ivan Reitman and written by Diablo Cody, who previously worked together on the 2007 Juno, for which Cody won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, and Mavis in this film has even been referred to as a grown-up Juno.

Charlize Theron plays Mavis, and when the movie opens, she is living unhappily in Minneapolis, where she learns that the wife of her high-school sweetheart, Buddy Slade, has just recently had a baby.

So, Mavis says, “It’s like he’s a hostage,” and she drives back to her hometown of Mercury, Minnesota, where she intends to win Buddy back, rescue him, or whatever other euphemism she can think of for stealing Buddy away from his wife and newborn baby.

However, before Mavis can meet Buddy for an “innocent drink,” she encounters Matt Freehauf, whom she doesn’t remember from high school even though their lockers were right next to each other.

Matt was and still is a geek, he is crippled, and then Mavis remembers that he is the “hate-crime guy,” the boy from their high-school days who was brutally attacked and crippled by some jocks for being gay, even though Matt wasn’t gay.

Mavis tells Matt that she is back in town to get Buddy back, because they were meant to be together, and Matt tells Mavis what she already knows, that Buddy is married and his wife just had a baby.

Matt lives with his sister, has a distillery in his garage, and Mavis keeps calling on Matt for alcoholic friendship when her plans to steal Buddy away from his wife keep not working out, especially when Mavis makes a scene at the baby’s naming ceremony.

Mavis believes that most people in Mercury seem to be so happy with so little, and yet it is difficult for her to be happy.

Young Adult is a comedy, but it is so dark, it is black humor.

I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”