Youth in Revolt is the new Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. It’s a film about the benefits of behaving badly and like the famous 1986 John Hughes movie it is headlined by an actor who brings charm and wit to the role of the rebel.
Hoodie heartthrob Michael Cera plays fourteen-year-old Nick Twisp, a mild mannered collection of raging hormones and quirky personality traits. He loves Sinatra and foreign films. When his family relocates to a Christian trailer park he meets his dream girl, Sheeni Saunders (Portia Doubleday), a similarly anachronistic teenager with a taste for anything French and a dream of being swept off her feet by a bad boy named Francois. When circumstance steps in to keep them apart he (with the help of an imaginary friend named Francois Dillinger) reverses his goody-two-shoes image and becomes a rebel with a cause—he wants to impress her.
Cera has a corner on the awkward by coming-of-age movie, and as Twisp he doesn’t do anything he didn’t do in Juno or Superbad, but he’s charming and easy to watch. His work takes on a different dimension, however, when he slips into alter ego mode. As the mustachioed Francois he’s a refugee from a Belmondo film, equipped with a cigarette, and too tight white trousers. It’s not often that an actor gets to show his range playing two characters in one film, but this is a step forward for Cera, who has been locked into the wisecracking virgin stereotype since he left the small screen’s Arrested Development, grew some peach fuzz and started chasing girls on the big screen. It’s not exactly his first adult part but it shows he can do something other than act like an awkward teen while delivering funny lines with pitch perfect timing.
The supporting cast, made up of reliable old pros like Jean Smart, M. Emmet Walsh, Fred Willard and Steve Buscemi, do good work, but the movie wouldn’t work if Sheeni wasn’t the kind of girl worth throwing your life away for, but in the excellently named Portia Doubleday Youth in Revolt finds a newcomer with charisma to burn.
Youth in Revolt is a funny, delightful movie but its main strengths are its actors—Cera who expands his range and Doubleday who debuts hers.
Lately we’ve seen lots of origin movies. Hugh Jackman starred in a blockbuster about the beginnings of his most famous character, Wolverine and Iron Man gave us the skinny on how Robert Downey Jr became a superhero. Now Jack Black and Michael Cera star in the mother of all origin movies. Year One is a Biblical satire that picks up where movies like The Life of Brian left off, bringing a modern sensibility to a story about the foundation of our civilization.
Black and Cera play Zed and Oh, hunter-gatherers banished from their village in biblical times. Cut off from all they know the pair meander through Old Testament era Mesopotamia, get sold into slavery, narrowly avoid the first circumcision and bump into everyone from Cain and Abel (David Cross and Paul Rudd) to Abraham (Hank Azaria). Eventually they try and rescue their old village-mates in the city where “the sinners are winners,” the doomed Sodom.
Much of the humor in Year One comes from Black and Cera dressing like hunter gatherers but speaking like a modern day odd couple. For example, when village leader Marlak (Matthew Willig) knocks a bowl of strawberries from Oh’s hand, Cera replies, “Well there won’t be any berries in the fruit salad now, so we all lose.” The anachronistic language is funny and the talented cast pulls it off, but I’m afraid there isn’t much more here than that.
Black and Cera bring their well defined comic personas—Black is the overconfident dumb guy, Cera the nerdy outsider—and both seem to have fun with their roles, but the ratio of laughs per minute isn’t as high as some other recent movies, most notably The Hangover. It’s a feel good movie, but not exactly a laugh-a-rama.
Part of the problem is the script. The thinly written story—it feels more like a series of skits than a whole—relies on the two leads to squeeze every last bit of charm from a script heavy with poo jokes, sex humor and all other forms of juvenilia, and for the most part they do, but Black’s mugging and Cera’s patented passiveness grow old by the time the credits roll.
Fortunately an all star list of cameos brightens things up a bit. Hank Azaria as Abraham brings the funny and Black’s Tenacious D sidekick Kyle Gass raises a smile as Zaftig the Eunuch. Both these supporting characters seem ripped out of another movie, a funnier movie. I left wondering what someone like Mel Brooks could have done with this material. I mean is there a more perfect Brooks character name than Zaftig the Eunuch?
Year One’s immature yuks should amuse fans of Jack Black and Michael Cera and it will offend some but leave most with only a faint smile.
As an audience member “Crystal Fairy” feels like you’ve arrived at the frat party a few hours too late. You’re sober, everyone else is drunk and the most interesting thing that is going to happen will be watching your friends stagger around until the fighting or crying starts.
Michael Cera plays against the meek nerd character he’s established in movies like “Juno,” “Superbad” and on television in “Arrested Development.” Here he plays Jamie, an aggressive American in Chile with a group of friends (played by director Sebastián Silva and his real life brothers) on a Hunter S. Thompson style quest for a local shamanistic hallucinogen called the San Pedro Cactus. The road trip to the ultimate drug trip isn’t easy going, however. The tightly wound Jamie’s pushy behavior is harshing their vibe and when he inadvertently invites uber-hippie Crystal Fairy (Gaby Hoffmann) along for the ride, the journey turns into a long, strange trip indeed.
Plotless and idea driven rather than motivated by story, “Crystal Fairy” coasts along on the charm of Cera and Hoffman. Both hand in memorable, hard-to-forget performances, but the movie meanders so much—which I guess is to be expected from a psychotropic road movie—that the truly interesting and revealing character moments get washed away by the tedium of the scenes that surround them.
