Youth in Revolt (2010)

Youth in Revolt stars Michael Cera as a 16-year-old sweet but nerdy horn-dog, who has yet to have a girl unwrap his weener. Sound familiar? It’s the sort of character that Cera has played almost exclusively – and much more amusingly – in movies such as Juno, Superbad, and Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist. 

This time around, Cera is Nick Twisp. It seems that everyone in Nick’s world is having sex but him. Nick’s dad (Steve Buscemi) is having his needs met by a woman half his age (Ari Graynor), while his mom is presently shacked up with a burping, slouching douchebag named Jerry (Zach Galifianakis, the dude from The Hangover). The only person whose sex life is worse off than Nick’s is his pal Lefty (Erik Knudsen), so named because of the direction his penis takes whenever it is erect. 

When Jerry gets into hot water with a group of sailors (that’s right, I said sailors), the family has to leave Oakland for a hideout vacation to a trailer park in Ukiah, California. While there, Nick meets Sheeni Saunders, the girl of his wet dreams (Portia Doubleday). Like Nick, Sheeni is an outsider of sorts – too smart and pretty for her religious fanatic parents, bad-poetry-writing boyfriend, and the rest of the park dwellers. She is a Francophile to the core, who reads Camus, is obsessed with mod-era French actor Jean Paul Belmondo, and listens to Serge Gainsbourg (on vinyl, of course). Unlike Nick, Sheeni has already ditched her virginity. 

Upon meeting, the pair engages in a painfully hipsterish conversation debating the merits of the films of Frederico Fellini and Yasujiro Ozu. Instead of a meaningful love story, we get a rushed-through couple of minutes during which Nick stalks Sheeni and she resists before breaking down and making out with him on a front porch. And then Nick’s summer vacation comes to an end.

Desperate not to lose Sheeni, Nick adopts an alter ego – Francois Dillinger – to help him be bad enough to get kicked out of his house so he can get back to her. But Francois and his tight white pants, loafers, and pencil moustache is more than even Nick bargained for. This cigarette smoking Frenchman (sans accent) helps Nick commit grand theft auto and burn down half of Oakland.

If only Youth in Revolt had started with the arson before screenwriter Gustin Nash’s unrealistic dialogue had the chance to lull audiences to sleep. It’s impossible to take seriously any of the self-aware, intentionally ironic, and dodecasyllabic words coming out of Nick and Sheeni’s mouth. For a pair of hormonal teenagers, they seem to have it all together, even when talking about sex. In the immortal words of Tai from Clueless, “Wow, you guys talk like grown-ups!”

Director Michael Arteta tries to help the humor along by introducing a seemingly endless parade of funny celebs – Justin Long, Fred Willard, and Ray Liotta among them – but doesn’t really get it right, either. Layering lots of cardboard characters on top of one another does nothing to improve this story. Maybe he should’ve tried a potty-mouthed Jonah Hill cameo to ground this mess in some adolescent reality. Arteta also punctuates moments in the film, which already feels herky-jerky and episodic, with bizarre editing techniques, including completely random animation.

Thankfully, the movie picks up a little comic steam once Francois enters the picture. But the humor does not come from the far-fetched plot line, condensed from C.D. Payne’s series of novels. It’s all courtesy of Cera’s adorable schtick. The contrast of Francois’ graceful, nearly girly run against Nick’s gangly hand-on-hips stance is terrific. I still can’t decide if Cera’s decision to skip the French accent altogether is brilliant (Nick is hardly worldly enough to do a good one even in his imagination) or just lazy acting. Either way, the twinkle in Cera’s eye as he delivers these ridiculous lines is the film’s sole redeeming quality.

The truth is that Cera, who is almost 22, is getting too long in the tooth for this type of character. By my count, this is the fifth time he’s popped his cherry on the big screen. It’s time for this promising young actor to move on from the (increasingly unfunny) genre of teen sex farce and into something a little less revolting.