Sixteen-year-old
Nick Twisp (Michael Cera) is an aspiring novelist of decidedly mid-20th century
tastes. Fellini and Sinatra are his heroes, not Tarantino or Eminem. He’s an
analog kid in a digital world. He’s also painfully shy and awkwardly out of
place, stigmatized as a virgin in a culture without innocence or romance.
As the
protagonist of the coming of age comedy Youth in Revolt, Nick finds the girl of
his dreams while on vacation, the smart but elusive Sheeni (newcomer Portia
Doubleday). She also likes Fellini and Sinatra (on vinyl), but has even greater
affection for Godard, Gainsbourg and all things mid-century French. After a
pleasant date on the beach, Sheeni announces, with regret, that she has a
boyfriend, a pretentious pseudo-Francophile whose bad poetry she recites. And
yet, she turns to Nick and demands, “Kiss me, you weenie.”
Girls can be so
confusing! Sheeni, Nick’s love at first sight, holds out the tantalizing apple
of hope. If he can move nearby, she might become more than a passing summer
fling. But to do so, he must be kicked out of his slatternly mother’s house.
Diffident Nick needs to be bad. Very bad.
Smutty but
funny, sexual without being sexy, Youth in Revolt is also a scathing satire of
Baby Boomers from the perspective of their teenage children. Based on C.D.
Payne’s novel, Youth in Revolt strongly implies that everyone over 40 is
ridiculous. Nick’s own parents are a couple of losers—mom dates a succession of
blue collar blowhards while dad is shacked up with a floozy half his age.
Sheeni’s folks are a happy couple of evangelicals who find evil everywhere.
Nick’s helpful neighbor, Mr. Ferguson, is a naive bleeding heart who runs a
safe house for South American refugees in his basement. Little wonder Nick and
Sheeni dream of escaping into the better world they found on old LPs and art
house films.
Cera extends
his range by playing the alter ego who coaches Nick on being bad. Not unlike
the Bogart character in Woody Allen’s Play it Again, Sam, Francois appears at
those moments when the protagonist needs worldly counsel. Suave and dressed in
cool continental style, Francois proffers tips on how to handle women and defy
authority. He is the bold, flaming youth Nick wants to be.
Director Miguel
Apta (Chuck and Buck) successfully distilled Payne’s long novel, a sequence of
half-Quixotic adventures in a delusional world, into a snappy feature film.
Beyond its humor, Youth in Revolt manages to be an empathetic account of young
people who are just too smart for the stupid society they are forced to
inhabit.
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