alobear | Youth In Revolt review

Chalk up another one in the "success" column for this year's more adventurous cinema-going - I thoroughly enjoyed Youth In Revolt, and probably wouldn't have gone to see it without my new plan to try more films. It's rather bizarre in places, and I totally diagree with pretty much everything the protagonist did and wanted, but somehow it just worked, probably because Michael Cera is so appealing that you can't help rooting for him even when he's being idiotic.

His "supplementary personality" stole the show, in a very Fight Club kind of way, but I also absolutely loved Vijay, the desperately earnest schoolfriend who seemed to have swallowed a dictionary in the best possible way:

Vijay: We can take my grandmother's car.
Nick: Will she be okay with that?
Vijay: She's currently in the hospital connected to life support machinery, so permission isn't a salient issue.

I was going to say there were lots of laugh-out-loud moments in the film, but that gives the wrong impression about what kind of humour it was. What I should say is that there were lots of moments that made *me* laugh out loud, which will give anyone who knows my usual attitude to film humour pause for thought.

Oddly, I'm not sure who I'd recommend the film to, though - it's the kind of American teen movie where the kids really don't talk like kids, but in a good way (think Juno, maybe). It unexpectedly worked for me, but that doesn't necessarily mean it will work for others.