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YOUTH IN REVOLT is an opportunity for Michael Cera to say "Screw you!" to all of those who have accused him of being a one-note comedic performer, and to prove them wrong. He succeeds. Although he plays the film's main character in the same way that he's played his characters in the past, he also plays an alter ego here who is a total asshole, and his performance is spot-on, with a perfect change in tone of voice, great facial expressions and an expertly deadpan line delivery. Unfortunately, there are two problems. First, Cera's rendition of his alter ego is far funnier than most of the other not-so-funny material that the film has to offer. Second, the alter ego is featured in a lot less scenes than he should be. If we had seen more of the banter between good guy Nick and the devilish Francois, this film would've been a total riot.
This film isn't without its strong points. As the protagonist, Nick may be the "hero," but it doesn't stop him from going on a spree of lies on two occasions during the film, both of which are funny. During the first one, Nick makes up the story of a girlfriend who doesn't exist, and during the second one, he's talking to a girl in a bathroom and comes up with a total fabrication about his enemy, Trent (Jonathan Wright). As alter ego Francois, Cera gives us the funniest lines in the film during the scene in which he is trying to get into bed with his love interest, Sheeni (Portia Doubleday).
The other source of humor in YOUTH IN REVOLT comes from the character of Vijay (Adhir Kalyan), who gets in cahoots with Nick. It's such a shame that the part of the film that features their road trip is so brief and that Vijay doesn't have more screen time because that would've certainly helped the proceedings. Unfortunately, we see more (too much more) of the rest of the supporting cast. Zach Galifianakis, Steve Buscemi and Ray Liotta have all seen better days in comedy, and it's hard to understand why they don't do much more than mug for the camera in this movie. The worst, though, comes from Justin Long, and it's not because the guy isn't funny, but because in the scenes he takes part in, he's forced to behave in a ridiculously subdued way that is meant to be indirectly funny, but doesn't manage a giggle. The first scene in which Long appears features him telling Cera's character that they "met in another life," but the way the moment is played, it makes little to no sense, and even worse, it's not funny at all. It's all downhill from there. There are instances in YOUTH IN REVOLT during which it feels like there's an attempt at the dry/serious humor that so many enjoyed in NAPOLEON DYNAMITE (though I didn't), and the problem is that not much of it works. Portia Doubleday is a fine romantic match for Cera, but neither of the two leads can escape the fact that this script lacks wit more often than not.
In my recent reviews of films that Michael Cera has starred in, I've defended him and said that, although he certainly does play a similar character in every film, that's not a BAD thing as long as the actor does a good job at playing the same character in every film, and Cera certainly does that. In YOUTH IN REVOLT, he's every bit as endearing and warmly funny in the role of the hero as we're used to seeing him, but he's also surprisingly hilarious as the anti-hero. If anything, this is evidence that his range really does go further than what we had gotten used to seeing, and it's a shame that we didn't get to see more of it. It'd be nice if this meant that we're going to see him play more jerks in the future, but with SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD as his next project, we may have to wait.
I wish I had better things to say about the first 2010 film that I'm reviewing, but the truth is that YOUTH IN REVOLT would've been better off giving us more of Nick's "revolting" and less of the lackluster dialogue and the generally limp work done by the secondary cast.
5/10
