On the surface, it might seem like just another Awkward Michael Cera Comedy. It’s true that element is present, but it’s also so much more. “Youth in Revolt” is the story of a precocious Bay Area teenager named Nick Twisp (Michael Cera) whose affinity for Frank Sinatra and Italian cinema only briefly distracts from his raging hormones. When his mother’s redneck boyfriend (Zack Galifianakis) gets in trouble with some naval officers, they decide to lay low in a camping trailer park in Ukiah. It’s there that Nick meets and falls head-over-heels for Sheeni Saunders (Portia Doubleday), an undeniable beauty and his intellectual equal. However, several elements keep him from being with his beloved including Sheeni’s religious parents and an over-achiever Adonis of a boyfriend named Trent. Nick creates id-like alter ego, Francois Dillinger, in order to undertake extreme measures necessary to get the job done, including blowing up part of Berkeley so that he will be sent to live with his dad in Ukiah.
It’s never an easy feat to adapt a beloved book. Besides the usual outcry from superfans, a 500-page adolescent hipster-training manual from 1993 would need some editing to become a 90-minute feature film. It was important to have a light touch so as to preserve the essence of C.D. Payne’s rich characters…
Read the rest at Identity Theory*.
*Film Threat is currently experiencing technical difficulties so reviews/interviews will be published on sister site Identity Theory until they are resolved.
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It was vintage Cera, if he is old enough to be vintage?: http://ribsramblings.wordpress.com/2010/01/17/ribs-reviews-youth-in-revolt/