Youth in Revolt: Michael Cera, Grow Up Already!

Bruce Birmelin/Dimension Films

Cera is adorable. The movie? Not so much.

Details

Opens at Metro and other theaters, Fri., Jan. 8. Rated R. 90 minutes.

Related Content

• After 15 Years of Waiting, We have 22 Seconds of a New Soundgarden Single
  March 26, 2012
• Seattle's Top 5 Food Resolutions
  December 28, 2011
• Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
  August 17, 2011
• Con Air
  March 23, 2011
• J.P. Patches, Seattle TV Icon, Finally Gets a City Dump Named After Him
  December 15, 2011

More About

• Michael Cera
• C.D. Payne
• Steve Buscemi
• Movie Stars
• Celebrity News

Like this Story?

Sign up for the Events Newsletter: What's happening in town? From underground club nights to the biggest outdoor festivals, our top picks for the week's best events will always keep you in on the action.

Privacy Policy Cancel Continue

Winded and weary from its long journey to a bigger screen, C.D. Payne's 500-page 1993 novel has been squeezed into a 90-minute Cliff's Notes version starring Michael Cera as Nick Twisp as Every Role Michael Cera Has Ever Had. Nick—portrayed in the novel as a 14-year-old "I'm Single, Let's Mingle" T-shirt-sporting, foreign-film-watching, Frank Sinatra–listening, Oakland-stuck virgin—has been stripped of his eccentricities, his smarts, his specialness. Now he's just another horny, too-smart movie teen doing whatever he can to get the girl (Sheeni Saunders, played by Portia Doubleday) between woefully animated sequences and surrounded by sketched-out weirdos, among them Steve Buscemi as his creepy dad with a bimbo galpal, Ray Liotta as a fascist cop in line to sleep with his mom (Jean Smart, who already played this part in Garden State), and Erik Knudsen as Lefty, so named because that's the direction in which his dick bends. It's as if the writer (Charlie Bartlett's Gustin Nash, now 0-for-2 in the revolting-youth sweepstakes) severed the jokes and hijinks from Payne's plain yet playful narrative with a dull ax. The surrealism and sensitivity of the novel, which spawned a cult of collectors who trade the limited-run first edition for hundreds of dollars, has been boiled down 'til it tastes like pungent tween formula.