What I admire about Charlize Theron (The Burning Plain, Monster) is how she does not let her looks interfere with her acting. Her character, Mavis Gary, is a dark, twisted role written by Diablo Cody (Juno) and Charlize does a wicked job with the words written for Mavis. Essentially, she gets the idea that what her lonely life needs is to reconnect with her old high school boyfriend; despite the fact, he is married with a new born child. But that doesn’t deter her from traveling back to her small Minnesota town, where they grew up and where he still lives, to carry out her plan with the determination of a rabid dog. As a counterweight to Charlize’s strong, out of touch character is Patton Oswalt (Big Fan) as Matt Freehauf, a broken soul who has never left the town. With this movie, Diablo recaptures some of her Juno smart, snappy dialog; however, it grows tiresome towards the latter part of the movie. Despite this, I feel the film is worth seeing, simply to marvel at Charlize’s performance. Could an Oscar nomination be kicking at her door?

3 stars