Reviewed
by Lamar Kukuk
1/12/10
Nick
Twisp, the hero of a series of novels by C.D. Payne, is like a lot of teenage
boys: obsessed with losing his virginity, convinced he's smarter
than every adult around him, and clueless as to why girls prefer “bad boys”
to the refined, nerdy likes of himself. What makes Nick different
is that these obsessions lead him to a complete nervous breakdown and the
creation of a dual identity who's free to be very, very bad on Nick's behalf.
Youth in Revolt, the new film version of the first three novels
in Payne's series, tells a story that could just as easily be the basis
for a horror movie as a comedy, and never does quite come to terms with
the contradiction between that and a desire to be fuzzy and uplifting.
But Michael Cera has found his Hamlet in the dual role of Twisp and his
alter ego Francois Dillinger, and that demented pair is enough to make
Miquel Arteta's film a consistently appealing tale of life's inequities
and how, if you can't win a girl with brains and personality, sometimes
you've just got to blow something up.
Nick
Twisp (Michael Cera) lives with his mother Estelle (Jean Smart) and her
loser boyfriend Jerry (Zack Galifianakis). A nerdy would-be writer
who listens to Frank Sinatra records all day, Nick is hopeless with women
and grows more frustrated with this fact by the day. Fate seems to
intervene when Jerry sells a lemon car to some angry sailors, necessitating
a road trip to his family cabin. OK, it's a filthy trailer, but it
happens to be down the street from the Saunders residence, where young
Sheeni (Portia Doubleday) flirts shamelessly with Nick, even going so far
to as to make out with him, although she insists her heart belongs to another.
When Jerry believes the coast to be clear, Nick can't bear the thought
of losing his would-be true love, and when Sheeni suggests he get himself
kicked out of his Mom's house so he can move in with his Dad (Steve Buscemi)
nearby, Nick snaps. He begins to imagine himself as two boys:
polite, respectful Nick and stone cold sociopath Francois Dillinger, who
lives to blow things up and get laid. Nick is horrified by the crime
wave Francois unleashes, but it succeeds in getting him exactly where he
wants to be. One problem: when Sheeni's Bible-Thumping parents
(M. Emmet Walsh and Mary Kay Place) learn that a juvenile delinquent is
courting their daughter, they ship her off to boarding school. Francois
has a plan, involving first a road trip, and then a diabolical conspiracy
to slip Sheeni sleeping pills so she'll be kicked out of school.
Can Nick ever hope to win the heart of the girl Francois is trying to destroy?
Early
on in Youth in Revolt, Nick makes the observation around which the
film revolves: “In the movies, the nice guy gets the girl.
But in real life, it's usually the prick.” And the film will resonate
most with viewers who've experienced this first-hand, although those pricks
will probably find a kindred spirit in Francois. I've never really
seen the Everydork Leading Man in Cera that many do, but his stoic Beta
Male act is a perfect fit for a kid for whom social awkwardness was the
first step toward full-blown psychosis. Francois just looks funny;
he's really just Nick with a flimsy French mustache and the steely eyes
of a gunslinger, but Cera also has improbably great comic chemistry with
himself. The scenes where Nick and Francois debate their course of
action (Francois always wins, of course: he is crazy, after all)
or the Evil Nick simply walks through the frame to mess things up are a
hoot: doubly so when we know that the real world sees everything
Francois says and does, but all of it comes out of Nick's mouth.
The
pieces are here for a great black-hearted satire of the way Nice Guys Finish
Last, but the problem Youth in Revolt has is that no matter how
much evidence it presents, it still doesn't want to believe its own thesis.
So, rather than simply embrace the fact that while she calls him Nick,
it's Francois Sherri loves, the movie keeps trying to persuade us with
randomly tossed lines and voiceover narration that what we're seeing isn't
the case. This results in an off-balance tone that makes it hard
to know how we're expected to feel about things like the sleeping pills
scheme or a pretty horrifying Saunders Thanksgiving dinner where Sherri's
equally mad brother Paul (Justin Long) doses their parents with hallucinogenic
mushrooms (Doubleday and Long play this scene like it IS in a horror movie:
weird stuff).
But
while it never settles its own schizophrenia, the movie chugs along aimiably
in part because it's filled with game funny people in supporting roles,
like Long, Smart, Galifianakis, Fred Willard (as Nick's very nice, very
strange illegal immigrant-sheltering neighbor), Ray Liotta (as another
of Estelle's questionable boyfriends), and Adhir Kalyan (whose up-for-anything
character becomes Nick's sidekick during the road trip to the boarding
school and could really have used a movie of his own). Doubleday
rolls effectively with the punches of a character who's always more about
reacting to Nick than setting her own course, although she's a lot more
interesting in the early scenes.
Arteta
keeps the plates spinning, although I'm not sure what to make of some randomly
inserted animation that must have seemed like a good idea at the time.
Youth in Revolt isn't the movie it could have been, but it does
give a name (Dillinger, Francois Dillinger) to that part of every shy guy
itching to start breaking noses and not stop until he gets the girl of
his dreams. Of course, that would be crazy... |
