Some actors get famous for playing one unique type of character – Sylvester Stallone will always be the monosyllabic tough guy, while Hugh Grant is the highly sensitive yet adorable British twit. And Michael Cera has made a name for himself as the ultimate high school nerd, awkwardly mumbling his way through one teen movie after another.
If there was ever a need for a young actor to reinvent his image, it’s Cera – for the persona he’s been stuck in is so passive his characters barely seem to exist. He takes a big, bold and highly entertaining step in that direction with the new comedy “Youth in Revolt,” based on a novel by a writer named C.D. Payne that’s become a cult sensation since its publication in 1993 and has confounded filmmakers ever since.
The reason why the novel has been so hard to adapt is two-fold: the book is a gigantic, 500-page tome written in the form of a journal composed by a fictional high-school student named Nick Twisp, and it’s packed with his randy sexual fantasies and frustrations. But screenwriter Gustin Nash and director Miguel Arteta (“The Good Girl”) have solved the problem in astute fashion: cutting down the frequency of the sexual material resulting in a 90-minute confection that’s still risque enough to be rated-R without being overly offensive. “Youth in Revolt” stands up well against the classic canon of the late great John Hughes’ ’80s teen films.
“Youth” follows the tale of Twisp as he expresses his frustrations with trying to lose his virginity. He’s incredibly awkward in normal teenage situations, yet has his own highly honed sense of taste with a particular fascination for French New Wave films and Frank Sinatra on vinyl. One summer weekend, while trapped with his zany cougar of a mom (a hilarious Jean Smart) and her bizarre loser boyfriend (Zach Galifianakis, the bearded bizarre loser from “The Hangover”) for a weekend at a dilapidated lake resort, he meets the girl of his dreams, Sheeni Saunders (Portian Doubleday in a terrifically sexy yet sweet film debut).
Sheeni is not only hot, but shares Nick’s affinity for esoteric arts and a zesty way with the clever kind of dialogue that “Dawson’s Creek” put in vogue. They fall for each other instantly, which is completely baffling to Nick, but her fundamentalist Christian parents keep magically appearing whenever Nick is about to reach the promised land. When Nick’s mom decides to go back home abruptly, Nick’s afraid he’ll lose his chance at not only sex but true love (he immediately proposes that Sherri run away with him and start an artistic new life jet-setting around the world) – so Sherri tells him “Be bad. Be very very bad,” so that his mom will dump him off on his father (Steve Buscemi), who’s about to move to Sherri’s small town with his bimbo girlfriend.
That’s when Nick invents his alter ego, a French badass with a pretentious mustache named Francois. Much like the cartoon devils that once rested on the shoulders of Loony Tunes characters encouraging them to do the wrong thing, Francois becomes the voice of absolutely no reason at all – pushing Nick to vandalize, steal, blow stuff up, and ultimately raid Sheeni’s girls-school campus in his quest for both sex and love.
“Youth in Revolt” packs all this and more into a fast-paced yet often touching 90 minutes, with a sterling cast that also includes Ray Liotta and comic legends’ Fred Willard and M. Emmett Walsh. Screenwriter Nash and director Arteta masterfully know when to loosen and tighten the reins in a scene, offsetting the dialogue with just the right touch of sincerity when it’s in danger of being too clever, and letting the occasionally outrageous scenarios leave just enough to the imagination.
Even Sheeni’s parents, who do fit the mold of an endearing caricature, are dealt with in short doses that keeps them from becoming offensive.
Cera rises to the challenge of his dual role, brilliantly balancing his sensitive-loser persona with the anarchic abandon dictated by Francois. Seeing him “blow up half of Berkeley” in one ingenious sequence is a delight that leaves viewers hoping he’ll continue to take chances, breaking out of his career shell with the same zest that Nick learns to break out of his personal rut.