Mavis Gray (Charlize Theron) is a 37 year-old divorced alcoholic earning a living from ghost-writing pulp teen romance novels. When she is e-mailed a photograph of her high school sweetheart’s newborn daughter, Mavis sets off to her own town in order to destroy his marriage, steal his heart and fix her broken life.

Young Adult is a starkly cynical movie from writer Diablo Cody (Juno) and director Jason Reitman (Up in the Air), and was certainly promoted on the back of those films when it was released in 2011. It is not as good as either film of course, but that does not stop it from being a hilariously mean-spirited, cold-hearted and oddly addictive little comedy.

It’s difficult to pinpoint why I liked it. It stars an unlikeable protagonist doing unlikeable things to what seem like fairly decent people. I should hate Mavis – certainly her behaviour is often unforgivable – yet I walked away from the film entertained and liking her very much.

Charlize Theron gives a great performance. She gives the character such a damaged, brittle quality that despite her behaviour you do want her to find a happy ending. I think it’s possibly the best thing she’s done in a career that’s included quite a few exceptional roles. Patrick Wilson is engaging as Buddy, her ex-boyfriend, but he struggles with what is essentially a deliberately banal and normal character. Particularly good is comedian/actor Patton Oswalt as Matt Freehauf, the former school nerd who was crippled by an act of anti-gay violence (although he was never gay) and now lives a quiet, unambitious life in his sister’s house. The odd yet utterly charming friendship between Mavis and Matt is what gives the film its emotional heart, buried as it is.

This is one of those films that a lot of people aren’t going to like, or even engage with it as a comedy to be honest. It lacks the sorts of Hollywood self-realisations or wish-fulfilments people might expect, not to mention any kind of shoe-horned moral lesson. It is what it is: mean, hard-edged, cynical and brutally amusing.

Comedy is the most personal of genres. What one of finds amusing another might find dull – or even repellent. There is a particular seam of comedy that finds humour in personal misfortune, and a lot of people genuinely struggle to find that funny. More power to them if that is the case: the entire point of film reviews is to give the viewer an impression of what any given production will be like. If Young Adult sounds odious, then it probably will be. If ‘funny but cruel’ sounds like your kind of thing, and you missed the film the first time around, it’s as good a time as any to dig it up and check it out.