Monday, January 18, 2010

Youth in Revolt

Many would say that actor Michael Cera has made it in Hollywood. He has now starred in many major motion pictures and a popular T.V series. Unfortunately, a bunch of theses movies are just weird and/or bad. Youth in Revolt was one such example. Cera plays Nick Twisp who takes on a separate persona in his mind in order to win the heart of a girl. For the most part his acting was pretty good. When playing Nick’s alter ego, Francois Dillenger, Cera had to portray something different than an awkward teen geek for really the first time since he came onto the scene. It was definitely refreshing to watch. The cocky figment of his imagination provided the funniest parts of the movie and the actor did well to switch back and forth convincingly.

The plot just wasn’t a great one. There were a bunch of unlikeable characters, many of which disappeared with no explanation as the story unfolded. The events were so contrived it was like reading a high school creative writing assignment where the author just throws in stuff to offend the teacher. One such example is the unnecessary drugging of multiple characters against their will by Justin Long’s character with mushrooms. As the minutes go by I found myself thinking most of these derelicts deserve to be arrested and movies like this one are why teenagers and young adults have such a bad reputation.

The ‘laugh out loud’ jokes were few and far between. The talent of Zach Galifianakis, Justin Long, Ray Liotta and others was completely under utilized and I almost would have preferred them to not be in this movie at all. That way I wouldn’t have to wonder what they saw in the script when they signed on. But I’ll end on a positive; the good jokes were really funny. They made me laugh… That’s all I got. (6 out of 10)

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