This dark comedy by the same writer and director team that created Juno stars Charlize Theron as Mavis, a 37 year old writer on the verge of an early midlife crisis. Whilst struggling to write the final book of a popular series of 'Young Adult' novels on which she has made her career, she receives an e-mail announcing the birth of her High-School sweetheart‘s first child.

Facing an uncertain future, she takes this as a sign that she‘s meant to be with her first love, Buddy, and sets off for her small home town to try to win him back. The movie charts her train wreck of an attempt to woo her happily-married former love away from his wife and child. Along the way she forms a friendship with Matt, a former school mate she barely remembers, but who becomes her conscience over many late night drinking sessions as she works through her plans to win Buddy back and live “happily ever after”.

Charlize Theron is brilliant as the woman who never really grew up, looking down on her old small town friends, only to find them happier and more fulfilled than she ever could be. There are some great cringe-worthy moments as her character tries to recover the glory of her former High School days, whilst everyone else has clearly moved on.

However, overall, the movie is a disappointment. The laughs are too few and far between, whilst the script is clunky and obvious. I found myself desperately waiting for the inevitable conclusions to come along and wrap the movie up. There is also an uncomfortable underlying message threaded throughout the movie: that those women who stay in their home towns become contented, serene mothers, whilst those who leave to pursue their ambitions end up alone, desperate and wishing they‘d married their first boyfriend after all.

For a movie that purports to be breaking the mold of how women are portrayed in Hollywood, I found this message to be as old as time and still just as insulting.