In Miguel Arteta’s Youth in Revolt, based on a series of short stories of C.D. Payne, Michael Cera plays Nick Twisp, a winsome sixteen year old hung up on Sheeni Saunders, a girl with fundamentalist Christian parents and a thing for Jean-Paul Belmondo. In order to be with her, he needs to get kicked out of his mom’s house, which means transforming himself into a juvenile delinquent named François and committing grand arson. This conceit allows Cera to take a novel approach to the problem of typecasting by playing a variation on the ineffectual-nice-guy character we know from Arrested Development, Superbad and Juno as well as the alpha male alter ego of same. This lets Cera show off what he does best — he’s the reigning king of the flustered, awkward reaction — while also stretching out in some impressive new directions: turns out he can do sociopathic intensity too! Luckily the film is able to match him in both sweetness and rage. Recurring references to Sheeni’s crush suggest a desire to make a teen Breathless, but Arteta’s direction has a controlled wildness and a knack for casual blasphemy that suggests Luis Buñuel remaking Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle. Rarely has a comedy surprised me so often without once violating its own tone or logic. The icing on the cake is the squad of expert character actors who inhabit the film’s margins: Steve Buscemi, Fred Willard, Mary Kay Place, M. Emmet Walsh and Justin Long are all familiar enough faces, but they’re rarely as funny or effective as they are here.
by Evan Kindley | Source: 35mm print
15 Jan 2010 5:21 PM | Submit Comment
