Diablo Cody sure likes to write movies about high school. She got lucky and wrote one of the best movies ever made, “Juno,” about a girl in high school who gets pregnant, for which she was awarded an Oscar, the worthiness of which is debatable. So right out of the gate, she is guaranteed that everything she ever writes, good or bad, will be produced and she will make tons of money for the rest of her life. She followed up her first great script with one of the worst movies ever made, “Jennifer’s Body,” about a girl in high school who is actually a demon or some stupid thing. Next up, “Young Adult,” or as it should be called “High school: all grown up.”

“Young Adult” is about a woman, Mavis, who is depressed with her big city existence, and tries to find something meaningful by returning to her home town in order to seduce her high school sweet heart who is now married and a father. It’s kind of a more honest and subversive version of standard romantic comedies like “My Best Friend’s Wedding.” The main character is utterly reprehensible, which can be a really great thing in a film. But if you start out with an unlikable character they damn well better be interesting, and interesting she is not. Charlize Theron is a great actor but unfortunately the character is incredibly boring and not at all interesting to watch. Patton Oswalt plays a former nerd who was ignored by Mavis, but is now the voice of reason. He’s a good actor too but this film is just so boring you’d be better off watching him in the incredible film “Big Fan.” The scope of the film is extremely small. There isn’t a scene that Mavis isn’t in and the whole thing takes place over the course of a few days all in her home town. It feels as though nothing really happens, because nothing really does. Mavis and her internal struggle is the whole movie and if she doesn’t interest you then there isn’t anything else for you in this movie.

In the end instead of learning that she is wrong and a terrible person, she learns that she has nothing to be depressed about in the first place and the whole film was just an unnecessary folly. Many great protagonists don’t change by the end of a film, and instead become more entrenched in already held beliefs. However here she learns something but it’s the wrong thing. She goes from being a bad person to a worse person. What changes is her desire to change. There are things here to admire about the chances that they took with the script. At least it’s not the same old story Hollywood tells over and over. But while it’s admirable that they tried something new, they ultimately failed to make an entertaining movie.