Michael Cera Is The Putz *And* The Poseur

YOUTH IN REVOLT (Dir. Miguel Arteta, 2009)

It's funny that Michael Cera has reportedly been the lone holdout for the prospects of an Arrested Development movie since he's never quite left the character of awkward yet lovable George-Michael Bluth behind. Cera has never shown us that he has any versatility, yet his trademark hangdog nervousness coupled with his particular brand of soft spoken sarcasm, has worked nicely in several movie comedies in the last few years - SUPERBAD being the best of those.

As Nick Twisp, that same Cera persona is on display in YOUTH IN REVOLT, but here there is sort of a promise of a twist to that persona in the form of a bad boy alter ego named François Dillinger. Unfortunately apart from a pencil thin mustache and an always present dangling cigarette in his lips, François is still the same Cera. He makes taunting risque comments to Twisp and acts according to the domino-effect accident-prone nature of the script, but it's still the same Cera. Sigh. Couldn't he have even just attempted an accent?

Cera affects François for the express reason of wooing the girl of his dreams (Portia Doubleday) - a neighbor in the trailer park his family fled to. Though we are introduced to Cera's Twisp by way of a masturbation scene, he fancies himself a well read intellectual who loves Frank Sinatra and in Doubleday he feels he's met his match. He longs to break away from the white trash world of his divorced mother (Jean Smart) who's shacked up with a scuzzy trucker (Jack Galifinakis), so he plots to get his real father (Steve Buscemi) to get a job and relocate so he can be close to the girl he loves. François appears to be the key to set this in motion.


Mix in reliable character actors Fred Willard, M. Emmet Walsh, Mary Kay Place, and Ray Liotta (as yet again an asshole cop) and this all plays as quirk by the numbers - "Independent Teen Angst Movie" it could be called. To jazz up these stale elements there's jaunty animation that looks like it was pilfered from Nickolodeon and Justin Long as Doubleday's laid back hallucinogenic mushroom providing brother.

YOUTH IN REVOLT was filmed a few years ago and possibly shelved because the producers (the Weinstein Brothers) sensed there was a lack of a strong hook to this material. Its release in early January seems to support this. The film has likable people, songs, and story strands but Cera feels severely miscast to the ultimate detriment of the movie. Unless Cera's got some major character deconstruction surprises coming anytime soon, here's hoping he reconsiders reprising George-Michael Bluth in the afore mentioned Arrested Development movie. I mean, c'mon! It's the only role he seems to have really played since.

More later...