Nick Twisp (Michael Cera) is a fairly laidback teenager with an affinity for Fellini and Sinatra. While his home life is a bit of a mess – flighty mom Estelle’s (Jean Smart) dimwitted boyfriend Jerry (Zach Galifianakis) is an uncouth pain, dad George (Steve Buscemi) is a bit of a cantankerous loudmouth who likes to bicker about the world’s unfairness – the kid does his best to keep a low profile trying to hope for the best.
Michael Cera and Portia Doubleday in The Weinstein Company's Youth in Revolt
Things change when he meets gorgeous free-spirit Sheeni Saunders (Portia Doubleday). From the very first moment he’s completely smitten with the girl, vowing to do whatever it takes to earn her adoration in order to be with her forever. But she likes bad boys, specifically French bad boys in the vein of Belmondo, so if Nick is going to impress the fellow he’s going to have to channel his undiscovered dark side.
Watching the reliably sarcastic and easygoing Cera dive headlong into that dark side (in the form of a mustachioed cigarette smoking Frenchman Francois Dillinger) is one of the primary joys of Miguel Arteta’s (The Good Girl, Chuck and Buck) sparkling Youth in Revolt. Based on the popular series of books by author C.D. Payne, the actor has a field day bucking convention and trashing his own image. His efforts add to the devil may care quality of it all, the film a joyously raucous celebration of anarchy with Cera gamely going for broke right at the very center.
Not that it’s always a smooth ride. I wish the stupendous supporting cast would have been given a bit more to do, Smart, Buscemi, Fred Willard, Justin Long, Ray Liotta, M. Emmet Walsh and Mary Kay Place left a bit stranded by the episodic tone. Screenwriter Gustin Nash (Charlie Bartlett) does what he can to give them all something to do but there just isn’t enough time to cram them all in a way that’s consistently meaningful, and while all have moments none of them are memorable enough for me to recount here.
Thankfully the central core is so delightfully strong it doesn’t matter that the edges are more than wee bit rough. Newcomer Doubleday is an absolute delight as Twisp’s object of affection, the actress walking a deliciously fine line between being enchanting and despicable making Sheeni a nicely complicated femme fatale provoking her paramour’s increasingly debauched behavior.
It is the very fact that said behavior is so pleasingly disgusting and amoral Youth in Revolt cuts such a humorously large swath. I must say, not since Paul Brickman had Tom Cruise set up a brothel in his own home as a teenage figure been so very good at being so very bad. Twisp does things that had my mouth hanging open in disbelief, the fact he kept compounding these decisions in ways so outside the norm keeping it there all the way through the end credits.
And what exactly is it that he does? I’m not going to say because revealing just how far down the rabbit hole he goes to win Sheeni’s affections is all part of the movie’s sadistically charming fun. What I will say is that Cera never shies away from the screenplay’s darker aspects, and the further Arteta and Nash take Twisp the more the actor seems willing to surpass their expectations in order to take things even deeper.
This pushing of boundaries and going as far as humanly possible to make an audience uncomfortable (while also getting them to laugh at the same time) is fast becoming one of the director’s hallmarks. Both The Good Girl and especially Chuck and Buck went out of their way to put their audiences on pins and needles, Arteta seemingly beyond happy to make them squirm in ways usually unheard of. Yet his films have both a heart and humanity that rise above the grotesquerie. More than that, they’re extremely humorous, tickling the funny bone in ways that feel original and new.
Youth in Revolt is certainly no exception. Ingenious moments of homage towards Goddard, Belmondo and Karina aside, this movie defies easy explanations while going above and beyond expectations at the same time. It pushes the envelope while at the same time breezily usurping convention in order to make it its own. As a start to a new year, this comedy is as good as it gets, and as a hopeful harbinger of things to come it’s a film that’s actually got me excited to see what the rest of 2010 has to offer.
Film Rating: êêê (out of 4)
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