Youth In Revolt

This film is kind of a fiasco but it had enough, I hesitate to say interesting, different and odd elements that keep me from completely dismissing it. Still even the sight of Fred Willard tripping on shrooms (which is always great) wasn't enough to distract me from the fact that that the film doesn't really appear to have any point. The main character Nick Twisp (played by Michael Cera in a manner that probably now best be described as Michael Cera-esque) falls in love with a girl while on vacation and she convinces him to basically become an arsonist to get kicked out of his house so they can be closer together. Her parents do not take kindly to this development, a fact she leverages into a trip to a french boarding school she's always dreamed of attending. Cera, not one to be kept away from his love, proceeds to have a classmate feed his lady love sleeping pills so she'll fail all her classes and get sent home to be with him. Somehow she is able to get over this and the film ends with them professing undying love for one another, and sort of riding off into the sunset (after Cera does his time in Juvenille hall of course). Since the film plays this ending pretty straight I'm assuming that they meant to justify the love of what are essentially two psychopaths (which I guess is interesting)? And if it was meant to be satirical then the execution was so bad I didn't see it.

As mentioned earlier the film also has a lot of weird elements (the kids will suddenly brake into highly formalized dialogue a-la the superior Brick, or a three octave organ in a mobile home) which serve to differentiate it from the typical teen sex romp, and did make me laugh a few times. It also seemed to think that Michael Cera being forced to run around in his boxers on multiple occasions is the height of hilarity - it isn't. Another interesting element is that about two-thirds of the dialogue in the trailer wasn't present in the theatrical version which indicates there was massive last minute editing and probably explains the disjointed feel of the narrative. So I can't really recommend seeing Youth in Revolt, but if you end up coming across is one day on cable there are worse ways to burn ninety minutes.