Where Theron had to completely shed her natural self for her role in Monster, she now shines with natural stunning beauty in Young Adult. The film uses Theron's looks to their full potential while delivering us a mess of a character that made me squirm in my seat each time she spoke another line of careless dialogue. In this movie, she's not a nice person. She's a shell of a human being that just can't let the past go. This makes for some extremely dynamic scenes between herself and Patrick Wilson. As Wilson once again plays the befuddled husband, Patton Oswalt does a great job bearing the comic load of the film.
Some may find the movie slow and aggravating. Myself, I quite enjoyed this movie. It's similar in tone to Juno but offers a more adult look at the world through the eyes of an aging prom queen that truly wants to recapture her youth while destroying every relationship in her path.