Youth in Revolt, 2009

There is no question that it was primarily due to the fact that I was 'high' on the roaring laughter of over a thousand people at Grauman's Chinese Theatre, but I found this film to be quite charming. Suffice it to say that it did an admirable job formatting the bulky content of Payne's novel. (This fact is especially impressive when you figure in that it's screenwriter, Gustin Nash was working as a stereo salesman at the time it was written). The skeleton of the plot is anything but original: a horny, awkward virgin meets a "Manic Pixie Dream Girl", (that ugly stock character that always seems to be eaten up with a spoon by many a spurious aesthete) and goes to extreme (and "hilarious") lengths in attempt to bang her. Sound familiar? The only element that puts this a notch above the myriad of films tied to this tired formula is the manifestation of a devious alter-ego, 'Franscois' (i.e. Cera's best work thus far). The trouble I have with this kind of film is the fact that the majority of its fans are fans in order to be "in" on something. They like it because they catch the Fellini, Ozu, Belmondo, and Serge Gainsbourg references, and they want you to know that. The trouble is, the film has such a rudimentary grasp of all these cultural figures, (perhaps it's the stereo salesman in Nash) that it uses their unfamiliarity as a cheap mechanism to get a laugh from the lowest common denominator. This has been done in a handful of other films and should greatly annoy the viewers who "get it" but it never seems to, why? I'd wager it's because they know the names, but not the work or significance. Like any faux-hipster film, this is going to appeal to the ego in audiences.

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