Tully (2018)

I watched Young Adult a while back and I didn't love it. It wasn't terrible but I sure didn't find it as good as Jason Reitman's previous movies. In spite of that and the fact that both Young Adult and Tully star Charlize Theron, I decided to give it a chance.

The film follows Marlo (Charlize Theron), a wife and mother of three, including a newborn baby, who is going through postpartum depression and is exhausted of having to take care of the kids all the time. When her brother Craig (Mark Duplass) offers the gift of a night nanny, though reluctant at first, she accepts which brings a young nanny named Tully (Mackenzie Davis) in her home. She and Marlo hit it off immediately and a very unusual relationship develops between the two women.

That's all I'm gonna tell you and all you need to know about Tully's plot. Without spoiling anything, I can tell you that the plot is simple and yet incredibly compelling and captivating and that it has an ending twist that will make you think. Tully's is a realist and intimate story about motherhood that shows how hard, exhausting and even impossible at times can be, but also shows that, ultimately, it is very rewarding. It is a deep and quite uncomfortable portrayal of motherhood.

In addition to that, Tully has character(s) you really care for. While the supporting characters are pretty thin --you barely notice Mark Duplass's Craig, Marlo's brother, and Ron Livingston's Drew, Marlo's husband--, Marlo is one of the most, if not the most interesting character of 2018. She is a woman who is trying to be a good wife to her absent husband and a good mom to her precocious but smart 8-year-old daughter, her quirky 6-year-old son who constantly needs attention --he's probably autistic-- and her newborn that basically cries all the time. She is exhausted, physically and emotionally drained as she also has to deal with her postpartum body that does not recognize as her own. Charlize Theron gives yet another fantastic performance. Not only she physically committed to the role by gaining 50lbs to understand better what Marlo was going through, but she gives such a realistic and haunting performance as Marlo. Everything she does or says, you believe it.

Focus Features

Another great performance comes from Mackenzie Davis. She is terrific as the free-spirited and insightful night nanny Tully, and her vibrant and refreshing presence is a real blast. Also, she shares a wonderful chemistry with Charlize Theron and, with the relationship between Marlo and Tully being the core of the film, it really helps keep the movie going.

Tully is also filled with clever, hilarious and realistic dialogue. Throughout very interesting, it gets even more gripping when it leans into the mundanity of family life. At last, director Jason Reitman and writer Diablo Cody, at their third collaboration, do a wonderful job in balancing the dramatic and humorous aspects of the story. They do an excellent job especially when it comes to finding humour in situations you wouldn't normally find humorous.

Young Adult (2011)

Having loved both Juno and Up in the Air, and having read/heard some pretty good stuff about Young Adult, especially about Charlize Theron, I finally checked it out only to be disappointed. While it's not a terrible film, it's not as good as Jason Reitman's previous movies. 

Once the high school It Girl, Mavis Gary (Charlize Theron) is a now a thirty-seven-year-old alcoholic divorcée who writes a young adult fiction series. The series once was a success but now it's been cancelled due to low sales. She is trying to write the last book of the series but she has a block so she decides to return to her childhood city and is determined to win back her high school sweetheart, Buddy (Patrick Wilson). Not even the fact that Buddy is married and has a baby will dissuade her. 

The plot isn't anything we haven't seen before. It's predictable, not very interesting and boring, and it really hurt me to seeing a woman doing that to herself. And the resolution of the story wasn't that satisfactory either. 

The main theme addressed by Young Adult is the same of Reitman's other movies, the unwillingness to grow up. The entire film is shouting it, from the title to the tagline. It's been done a lot of times before and there's nothing in here that elevates the film and makes it stand out. 

Unless there is. Kinda. There are the characters/performances. Mavis Gary is a horrible person. She is a drunk who does not want to grow up. She is egocentric, so immature it's pathetic but at the same time she is so unhappy and unfulfilled you kind of feel sorry for her. She is the kind of woman who tries to conceal all that with makeup, perfect nails, hair and designer clothes, only beauty can't fix her. And Charlize Theron delivers this pathetic character.

Paramount Pictures

That said, the reason I kept watching was Patton Oswalt's Matt Freehauf. He is one of Mavis's high school classmates, notorious for being beaten up and left for dead by a group of popular kids who assumed he was gay. He has been a cripple ever since and lives a sad, quite depressing life with his sister in the city they all grew up. He is a clichéd character who is given a backstory only to make him sympathetic, and yet he is the most interesting thing in the film and that's because of Oswalt's performance. He is simply great both at drama and comedy --the only humour that works in the film comes from him. And the non-so-unexpected relationship that developed between him and Mavis makes the story more interesting.