Geraldine
The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.
cattrelc
Like some previous reviewers have noted, if you don't enjoy Michael Cera, stay away from this one. I would also recommend that if you don't like some of John Hughes earlier films, you might also not enjoy this movie. I like both but Cera more than Hughes. However, I don't know how long that will be true. I first saw Michael in Arrested Development and I don't know if I have seen him play anything except for George Michael since. That is fine for awhile but I get the sense that I might grow tired of it eventually. This movie was enjoyable for its absurdest sensibilities and for some decent casting. Nothing really blew me away but I genuinely believed that everyone in it was who they were playing. I didn't appreciate the end message which seemed both disingenuous and heavy handed. Still, its nice to see a movie about unabashed love and teen awkwardness portrayed w/o a high degree of shock value. Maybe I am a little old fashioned but I can still appreciate a good (mostly) clean coming of age film.
SnakesOnAnAfricanPlain
A teenage Fight Club? Cera creates a split persona to do all the things he is too scared to do. Mostly revolving around a girl. Youth in Revolt is entertaining quirkiness, but the quirkiness does become sickly at points. There's only so much weird for weird's sake you can take. The film is also like a drunken rambling teen, obviously taking a lot of stuff from an episodic book. I'm sure it gels together better in text form. What is on screen is entertaining and often funny. Cera should be given credit for managing to make two clear personae, even though up until now he has played the same character. Plenty of older actors stepping in for small roles, but they're never appreciated.
itamarscomix
Dear viewers: the makers of Youth in Revolt would like you to know that they really want you to like their movie. They're willing to do whatever it takes. They'll give you juvenile sex jokes, partial nudity (but nothing too raunchy that might offend somebody and lose a vote), explosions, they'll give you names of philosophers, hints of sophisticated subtext, references to classic literature and quirky animation sequences, they'll hire top character actors and give them absolutely nothing interesting to do.Youth in Revolt tries so hard to appeal to everybody that it loses itself along the way. It vies to be the darling of indie-loving hipsters and hormone-addled adolescents at the same time, or in other words it tries to appeal to the Juno crowd and the American Pie crowd, but it doesn't manage to feel as quirkily likable as Juno or even the lesser 500 Days of Summer; it's also far too dark to fit in that category. For a run-of-the-mill teen sex comedy, on the other hand, the dialog, very clearly meant to tell the viewer that it's an intelligent movie for intelligent people, but clearly written with a thesaurus close at hand, feels clumsy and out of place. It doesn't help that most of the actors, Portia Doubleday most of all, clearly have no idea what the names and words they're saying actually mean. The film, in fact, stands out as one of the worst cases of bad line delivery I've seen in a while, which is jarring in a movie that evidently has a decent budget and high production values.The acting is a real waste too. Michael Cera has been playing the same character for nearly a decade now, and he generally gets away with it, mainly because he's adorably awkward enough to make the characters likable. It doesn't work this time, though; Nick comes off as en egotistical, whiny hypocrite who gets no love from the audience, and when he's playing his alter ego 'Francois' - well, let's say I'm starting to doubt that the kid has as much potential as I once thought he did. Cera doesn't take a lesson from Peter Sellers, Kevin Kline, Christian Bale, hell, even Jerry Lewis - all of whom played multiple characters in one movie and made it work. Nick is Michael Cera playing himself, Francois is Michael Cera playing himself pretending to be someone else, poorly. And while Nick is hypocritical and annoying, Portia Doubleday's character is spoiled, manipulative and deserves everything that happens to her. It's really a bad sign when you're watching a romantic comedy and rooting for the protagonists to not end up together.On top of which you have a bunch of excellent character actors and indie darlings who go to complete waste. Zach Galifianakis isn't funny, Steve Buscemi is bland and dry, Ray Liotta does nothing and M. Emmet Walsh clearly has no idea what he's doing there. The best acting in the whole movie comes from Fred Willard, all two minutes of it, which is a shame because his character had more promise than anything else in a movie.I guess a lot of people enjoyed this movie, and there's no accounting for taste, but in my opinion Youth in Revolt was so manipulative and pathetic that a couple of funny moments and a professional production weren't nearly enough to make me glad I spent 90 minutes on it.
MLDinTN
trying to lose his virginity. Michael Cera plays the nerd yet again; this time he is Nick Twisp. He lives with his mom and her live in boyfriend. They go to a trailer park for a week where Nick meets Sheeni, the girl of his dreams. He invents this French alter ego (he's French because Sheeni is obsessed with anything French) that comes up with these plans to try to get kicked out of his house so he can live with his dad, whom lives close to Sheeni. So the alter ego steels and starts fires and Nick gets his wish. Only problem is Sheeni is now going to a private French school. So Nick has to devise more evil plans to try to be with her. His plans are crazy and silly which is what makes the movie funny.FINAL VERDICT: A teen film with some laughs, a good choice if nothing else is on.
