“Life, here I come.”

Cody and Reitman do a terrific job at creating the small town feeling and the intense necessity to break out from the claustrophobia it can stir up. Simultaneously, they also capture how deeply nostalgic it can be to go back, and just how entranced people get by the past and ‘what if’ scenarios, especially during a transitional period. This is to say that Young Adult thrives on the tension between two opposing forces, one trying to break in while the other attempts to break out. The result is, of course, explosive, but more in a “personal growth” sort of way.