Adapted from C.D. Payne's 1993 triptych (three installments were published in one volume), Youth in Revolt took so long to make it to the screen it's practically a period piece. And while its star, Michael Cera, could not be more of-the-moment, the casting is a perfect fit: Cera's expertise in playing the moon-faced aspirant is largely derived from the bewilderment he seems to radiate at being caught out of his time -- a diffident, longhand wisp lodged in a vulgar, thumb-typing world. As Nick Twisp, adolescent narrator and hero of his own beleaguered, lonely life, Cera pulls from his usual hoodie full of tricks, and that's just fine: Pathologically incapable of a stale moment, as far as I'm concerned Michael Cera is better at playing Michael Cera than most actors are at playing anybody else.
The pleasant surprise -- and most of the fun contained within this genial but shambling portrait of a first, obsessive infatuation and its mutative effect on the developing male psyche -- is bound up in Cera's incarnation of Nick's alter ego, a ciggie smoking, pencil moustache-wearing id on legs named Francois Dillinger. In a deft bit of explicit, on-screen evolution, the actor suggests that the patented character we all assume is simply Michael Cera redux has not just unsuspected depths but range. And if Nick (and this is Cera's second Nick running) is Cera, then Cera is also the suave, sociopathic Francois! Le voila, haters!
C.D. Payne's novels are written as journals, and in presenting us with the life and times of Nick Twisp, director Miguel Arteta attempts to balance Nick-the-diarist's dramatic self-construction with more humbling, omniscient intimacies. The film opens, for instance, with the sound of what sounds and then is confirmed to be Nick masturbating, alone in bed. Only after we watch him catch his breath, then perfunctorily slip out of bed and continue on with the regularly scheduled teenaged boy business (putting on a record, scanning his private library -- like I said, 1993) does Cera's voiceover kick in, instructing us that this young onanist happens to be "a voracious reader of prose." All of the teenaged characters speak like rejects from an E. M. Forster novel, which is partly a joke on Nick, who clearly aspires to live in an E. M. Forster novel, and partly a joke on us, an audience assumed to find self-conscious elocutions and complete sentences hilarious -- which they are.
In the case of Sheeni Saunders (Portia Doubleday), the cute daughter of religious fanatics whom Nick meets during an enforced sojourn his mother (Jean Smart) and her skeezy boyfriend (Zach Galifianakis) make to a nearby trailer park, those sentences seem mediated to the point of ventriloquism. "For all the world knows, my vagina could be moist with desire as we speak," Sheeni says to Nick, after asking him to cover her "exposed areas" with suntan lotion and then chiding him about his inevitable boner. All blinding crushes, but especially the first, formative ones, are primarily feats of imagination, and once Sheeni has sparked Nick's -- in a brief exchange outside the trailer washrooms -- she becomes his conception, his character -- not ours. It's a technique that works well for a while: Youth in Revolt is, yes, another snapshot of a young man crippled and then catalyzed by his feelings for a blithe, maddening young woman (I can think of half a dozen, including Adventureland, Two Lovers, (500) Days of Summer, and, uh, I Love You Beth Cooper from the last year alone), but Cera's performance and the inventive split-psyche device freshen it considerably.
And yet Artera aligns us so closely with Nick's experience of the world (several subjective leaps into animation work less well than they should) that we sometimes lose perspective on not just where the film is going (although its true north points unbudgingly toward Sheeni's underpants) but why. Newcomer Doubleday does well with her limited, wide-eyed temptress duties, but the nature of her role as vessel for Nick's hopes and dreams is by definition severely limited, and the plot's hinge on her extolling Nick to be "very, very bad" plays pretty random. Because it is so subjective, it becomes unclear what Nick is recounting, intuiting and plain making up. This wouldn't be a problem if it weren't for the film's end-point of abject sincerity. As the story begins to take on Odyssey-like dimensions, with Nick (and Francois, who facilitates the badness Nick can't quite pull off on his own) riding out storm after storm of self-generated bad weather, the appeal of Sheeni and what she represents for Nick gets lost. His final, triumphant speech on feeling less alone in the world and being loved for who you are buttons things up a little too sweetly.
Despite a buoyant energy, a series of pretty great moments and a wonderful performance, Youth in Revolt feels longer than its 90 minutes. The soundtrack is, of course, supremely knowing if enjoyably obscure, the supporting cast is flawless (Steve Buscemi, Justin Long, Ray Liotta and Fred Willard do some reliable light lifting, and Adhir Kalyan is a wonderful foil for Cera; the two perfectly embody the way that smart young boys, left with no alternative, make a sort of theater of their predicament). Not a classic, cult or otherwise, Youth is a calculated and largely successful attempt to evoke the pristine and more muddled longings of the overlooked, undersexed smart young boy at large inside men (and women) of all ages -- no small thing, as a slew of less-than coming of age flicks attest.
"Yesss," the thirtysomething man behind me sighed, as the final freeze frame of Cera's face faded to black, and who could blame him? Not me.