Number Seven - Michael Cerra doing what he does best...?

As I am probably not going to get Yankee Doodle Dandee here's some contemporary filler:

Youth in Revolt is a comedy about teenager Nick Twisp, played by michael Cerra, who is finding life is hard and getting him down. He lives with his mother, Jean Smart, who is more into her younger, layabout boyfriend, played excellently by Zach Galifianakis (of Hangover fame) than her son. Nick is struggling along in life and taking it on the chin, until one day he meets the girl of his dreams Sheenie, Portia Doubleday, who makes him realise he needs to change, he needs to toughen up, he needs Francois Dillinger!

I have to admit when I saw the trailer for this film it looked mildly amusing, but nothing special. Yet another film of Michael Cerra playing the same feminine-like nice guy. However the supporting cast swayed me into giving this film a go. And I'm glad I did. The parents and parental figures in this film are played so well that you can't help but yell "good for you" when Nick/Francois bite back. Twisp's mother and boyfriends (the second of which is played by the slightly scary Ray Liotta) are so wonderfully impatient, neglectful and selfish, they create, along with Sheenie, the perfect catalyst for Nick's rebellion. And speaking of Sheenie, she comes across as a confident and smart girl without being portrayed as a "bitch" which can always be a danger with confident female characters.

Of course, as was expected, Michael Cerra is once again playing the shy nice guy, but I was interested to see how his alter ego Francois would work out. There is maybe not enough of this darker side of Nick but what I did see I liked. The dress sense of Francois was strange, but I'm guessing it's supposed to be of European styling...? His appearance overall was amusing, most probably on purpose, his meagre moustache is genius, but there was definately a difference with the type of dialogue Francois was spitting out, which was pleasantly very funny. However, after saying that I still think that Michael Cerra was probably playing it safe by taking this role on, as a majority of the time he is still playing the nice guy, and it seems Cerra is testing the water with his alter-ego rather than plunging in and going for something totally different. Guess we'll have to wait till Edgar Wright's adaptation of Scott Pilgrim for that.

Overall, the film was better than I thought, not qiute sure if that was because I went in with low expectations or not. The cast as a whole are great! A small role from Steve Buscemi is very welcome in this film, he is a consistently good actor anyway, and Fred Willard turns out (yet another) hilarious performance as Nick's activist neighbour (look out for the scene where they eat mushrooms!). The film is not overly long and the humour is more grown-up than that of usual movies with teenage lead characters, think along the lines of Juno. I also liked the message that the film seems to be telling me, perhaps as a nice-guy (or girl) myself, that sometimes you have to stand up for yourself, sometimes you need to raise a little hell to get your point across, sometimes it's good to be bad.