Film

Director Miguel Arteta’s superficially good-natured movies (Chuck & Buck, The Good Girl) usually double as snide exercises in humiliation, and Youth in Revolt—based on a novel by C.D. Payne—only furthers this off-putting trend. On summer break, a gangly teen called Nick Twisp (Michael Cera) falls for a French film–loving beauty with the equally quirky name of Sheeni (Portia Doubleday). She has born-again parents who hate him and a perfect dipshit boyfriend. But amused by Nick’s attention, Sheeni prompts a harebrained scheme: If he behaves badly enough that his single mother will cut him loose, perhaps the two of them can be together.

Toward that end, Nick conjures a Play It Again, Sam–like alter ego named François (also Cera), who feeds him lines and abets him in ostensibly shrug-worthy law-breaking. It’s at this point that Youth in Revolt gives up on making sense. There’s funny material on the periphery, particularly the bits involving Fred Willard as an aging leftist and Justin Long as Sheeni’s drugged-out brother. (The latter’s blasé reaction to a disastrous Thanksgiving dinner provides by far the movie’s biggest laugh.) But Cera has gone from awkward to bland—compare his performance here to Jesse Eisenberg’s similar work in Adventureland—and the material feels tired. Making Juno look like social realism, the film seems fueled less by revolt than indifference.