Jason Reitman and Diablo Cody are at it again! ‘It’ being creating the indie hit film of the season.
I love Diablo Cody – in the sense that I also hate her a little bit, and am incredibly envious of her career, putting aside the advent of Jennifer’s Body. I also love Jason Reitman. He manages to make films with interesting cinematography, without ever distracting from the plot. This writer and director first teamed up on Juno, which- as a young woman with a penchant for fast-paced dialogue – I loved. Four years later they’ve made another film. Young Adult, starring Charlize Theron, follows a divorced shadow-writer of young adult fiction – with a bad attitude and dirty mouth – who returns to her hometown to rekindle a romance with her ex-boyfriend (Patrick Wilson, who is now married with children.
One might expect that, coming from the same writer/director team, the films would be similar, but this doesn’t look to be the case. Let’s have a look at the trailers, shall we?
While Juno perhaps deals with more controversial subject matter (are depictions of teen pregnancy still considered to be controversial?) it’s also designed to be a light-hearted trailer that will appeal to teenagers of a certain sub-cultural persuasion – indie. Witty slang and quips! Twee soundtrack! Michael Cera! The trailer barely hints at the very real heart and feeling that Juno managed to embody, Ellen Page really did deserve to be nominated for that Oscar. The trailer for Young Adult, however, has quite a different tone.
The trailer still seems to be designed for an audience with tastes slightly-left-of-centre: the humour is dry and deadpan, Charlize Theron says socially unacceptable things about hating children, and the trailer song is still of the indie-rock persuasion. In Young Adult, though, the overall tone of the film is quite a bit darker. Where the trailer for Juno is bright, upbeat and fast-paced throughout, Young Adult keeps a relatively measured pace, and for every clip of a witty quip being delivered by Theron, there is a shot of her looking haggard, wearing smudged mascara and a blonde, artfully disheveled bob.
If not already apparent from the trailer, a 30 second clip of the film also reveals that the humour will be more cynical and sarcastic. While Juno had both of these in moderation, it was overall more uplifting, and went more for “different” than “dismal.”
Though, one very clear similarity beween the two films? A penchant for unusual names for the female lead. Juno in Juno, and Mavis in Young Adult. Oh, Diablo Cody.
