YOUTH IN REVOLT

    Youth In Revolt, Miguel Arteta’s thoroughly winning adaptation of C.D. Payne’s cult novel, has had a long and tumultuous journey to the big screen.  First published by tiny Aivia Press in 1993, the book was really three books in one, and weighed in at just under 500 pages.  Fox held the rights for a while, shooting a TV pilot in 1998 that never aired.  Finally, producers Bob and Harvey Weinstein stepped in, and the film started active development.  After generating great festival buzz last fall, the Weinsteins decided to postpone the movie’s announced October release date to January 2010, only to find it face to face with juggernauts like Avatar and a host of other Oscar contenders.  All of this is unfortunate, because Youth in Revolt will undoubtedly be remembered as one of the funniest comedies of the year.

It’s also unapologetically raunchy. Beginning with a masturbation sequence and moving on from there, we know from the get go that Nick Twisp is a long way from George Michael Bluth or the other sweet natured characters that Michael Cera has played. The standard knock on Cera is that he always does the same thing.  The Cera Effect consists mainly of a lot of deadpan line delivery and an equal amount of naive befuddlement.  The character of Nick allows Cera to do his thing effectively while also giving him room to get in touch with his more rebellious side.  In an inspired move, Cera is also cast as Francois Dillinger, Nick’s sociopathic yet surprisingly charming alter ego.

The plot is nothing we haven’t seen before.  Nick is a frustrated teenager looking to free himself from the shackles of his virginity.  His home life is less than perfect.  Living in Oakland with his Mom (Jean Smart) and her trucker boyfriend (Zach Galifinakis), he is reluctantly dragged along for a camping trip at a lake front trailer park.  Little does he know that he’s about to meet Sheeni Saunders (Portia Doubleday), a local teen who quickly becomes the love of his life.  But there are obstacles.  Nick lives in Oakland, Sheeni lives in Ukiah, and still has feelings for Trent, her sweater clad, wind surfing, futurist percussive poetry writing boyfriend.  How will they be together?  For Sheeni, the answer is simple:  “You must be bad, Nicky.  You must be very bad.”  Nick agrees to do so, and where his courage fails him, Francois is more than happy to oblige.

What sets Youth in Revolt apart is the glee that it takes in Nick’s rebellion. Beginning with minor acts of household mischief and petty vandalism, Nick and Francois very quickly up the ante.  When a plot to wreck his parents’ car leads to a fire that destroys half of Berkeley, Nick hits the road for Ukiah, only to discover that Sheeni’s parents have seen him coming and packed their daughter off to an all French speaking boarding school in Santa Cruz.  What to do? Enlist one of Sheeni’s classmates to slip sleeping pills into her morning orange juice so she’ll flunk her way back into his arms, of course! 

All of this and much more is played to great effect by a terrific cast of comic actors.  Just when you thought the movie has played out its hand, along comes Fred Willard as Mr. Ferguson, Nick’s kindly neighbor with radical left wing tendencies.  Willard only has a few minutes of screen time, but nearly every second of it is hilarious.  Ray Liotta, and Jonathan B. Wright as Trent also register big laughs in small roles.

If the film has a flaw, it’s that at 90 minutes, it feels a bit overstuffed.  This is par for the course with most literary adaptations, but this is one movie that could have used 10 or 15 more minutes.  Gallifinakis is funny, but all too brief, and character turns by Ray Liotta and Steve Buscemi don’t really register the way they should.  The lead performances by Cera and stellar newcomer Doubleday more than make up for this, and Arteta’s direction is solid throughout. 

By cherry picking many of the funniest moments and lines from Payne’s novel, Youth in Revolt should satisfy die hard fans of the book, but it also stands alone as a very entertaining and original film in its own right.  Payne also went on to write three more Nick Twisp novels, so we know that if the movie does well, there’s plenty of material for a sequel. 

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