Tags
Comedy, Drama, Fred Willard, Jean Smart, Michael Cera, Movie, Portia Doubleday, Ray Liotta, Romance, Steve Buscemi, Youth In Revolt, Zach Galifianakis
R
Michael Cera, Portia Doubleday, Jean Smart, Steve Buscemi, Fred Willard, Ray Liotta, Zach Galifianakis
Nick: How are we gonna get down there?
Vijay: We could use my grandmother’s car.
Nick: Would she let us have it?
Vijay: She’s in a hospital at the moment, hooked up to life support equipment, so permission is not really a salient issue.
Nice guy Nick (Cera) must turn into bad boy Francois in order to win the girl of his dreams.
So I’ve got this really original idea for a movie! See, there’s this geeky teen who doesn’t have a lot of friends and doesn’t do well with the ladies. In fact, he’s a virgin! And he’s really ashamed about it, as any 16 year old should be, naturally. He’s a really nice guy, but has to sit back and watch as the girls all go for the better looking jerks. But then, through some strange circumstances, our hero ends up meeting a beautiful, lonely girl looking for a way out of her unfulfilling situation. He’ll go to great lengths to impress her and be the guy that he thinks she’d want, but in the end he’ll discover that all along he just needed to be himself.
Whaddya think?
It’s been done? 4,768 times? Huh…I must’ve missed all of those.
Well, okay, let’s borrow some originality from some other movies. Let’s have Nick develop a Tyler Durden like persona that will help him become the bad boy. We’ll call him Francois, and he’ll have a wispy little mustache and smoke cigarettes.
More?
Okay, Nick has a rough family life. His parents are divorced and are both dating people they shouldn’t be dating. There’s all kinds of comedic potential there…presumably. We’ll get Zach Galifi-whatever and I’m sure he’ll just make his role funny. We won’t even need to write funny lines for him. That should work.
Oh, and the girl’s parents are religious freaks! And her brother’s a druggie…
Still not enough?
Okay, we’ll work in a big explosion, some animated moments, a few punches, some light sex, and a Steve Buscemi freakout! Plus…dinosaurs! Huge, rampaging dinosaurs that are constantly jumping out and trying to eat everybody!
No on the dinosaurs? Okay, but the rest of it should work fine!
What’s the moral of the movie? Well…early on we’ll have Nick say “In the movies, the good guy gets the girl. In real life, it’s usually the prick.” Then we’ll have him say something in the end about how he really only had to be himself all along. Though actually, the girl will have never been truly interested in him until he became more of a bad boy. So it’ll be kind of ironic…or something. Don’t ya think?
Eh, it’ll all work itself out once we’re filming, I’m sure.
So…can I have money now so we can get started? Oh, and do you have Jesse Eisenberg’s number…? Oh…well what about Michael Cera’s?
Michael Cera clearly does not mind playing the same role over and over again.
10 – 1 because it’s just not a very original setup – 1.5 for being too slow moving at times – 1.5 for just not being consistently funny = 6.0
I like the quote about the dog for sale:
“How much?”
“Ten dollars.”
“All I have is a subway card with four stickers.”
“…..Sold.”
This review gave me the biggest laugh I’ve had in a long time. You’re right — raptors would have made this more original. Totally more original.
All that said, though, I didn’t hate “Youth in Revolt” probably because I don’t hate Michael Cera. I like him because even though he plays the same character over and over again, I happen to like that one character. Also, there are scads of actors who’ve made profitable careers of playing the same character over and over. Look at John Cusack or Harrison Ford. Whenever they deviate from type, critics either rave about ’em or hate ’em.
yeah, i don’t really mind michael cera, but it is starting to get old. i mean, he’s 22…how much longer is he going to play the awkward teen role?
now THIS is a movie i had to turn off after the first twenty minutes. HATED it. fucken juno of 2010. so tired of this quirky pseudo-original twee shit.