Youth In Revolt: The Post Screening Survey

All my old passwords used to be Youth In Revolt characters because I'm not very original. The safety question to my bank login was "Youth In..." because I'm basically not smart.

The problem is this book just shouldn't be a movie. You simply can't have a coming-of-age boy-losing-his-virginity story that takes place now where no one has Internet or cell phones. Teenage friends don't camp out in the backyard and look at sex position books together anymore. Thanks, Bang Bus.

Being sexually repressed and clueless is cute, but do you know how long cute lasts? About half as long as this scene:

Time changes things and that's just how shit goes. In a post-JFK world, presidents don't ride in convertibles. In a post-911 world, you don't say hummus in an airport. In a post-Wes Anderson world (never forget) you don't have poignant crush moments with acoustic guitars. Youth in Revolt the movie has about 12 of them and they get a little taxing.

There's also some lovely but unmotivated claymation scenes whose only reason for being in the movie is to boost the cute quotient (see marketing campaigns for Away We Go and Paper Heart and 500 Days of Summer) and take screen time away from Zach Galifianakis.

Also, can we all agree to stop believing Michael Cera is a virg? Last year I saw him at The Box performing his infamous Tri-Cera-Tops and all three of those girls had to get taken away in an ambulance, poor things. Motherfucker is Bill Brasky in real time. Believe.

Nick Twisp, the boy Cera plays, has an alter ego. He is dark, dashing and mischievous and his name is Francois. He is a twee Tyler Durden with a pencil mustache and bright blue contacts. Francois is in all the best scenes because that's basically when Cera isn't being Cera. Francois is why you should see the movie.

The movie isn't a successful love story, but then again, the book wasn't either. The book was about angst and so is the movie. Sheeni, the love of Nick's life, is kind of a whack B. She is manipulative and super articulate and witty and she's basically Juno and Nick Twisp is basically Pauly Bleeker and Michael Cera also played him and he also played Nick from Nick and Nora and that's two Nicks and two Junos and what the fuck!

But he breaks the mold a little bit here.

People who make movies generally have nothing to do with when they get released and sometimes it's just dumb luck when you have a movie out about hungover dudes and Zach Galifianakis makes a funny speech about wolves and then another movie about revolting youth comes out right afterwards where Zach Galifianakis is wearing a wolf t-shirt and everyone in the theater is like, "hey, he copied himself! not funny!"

The bottom of the survey was where the studio bared its insecurities about the movie. I left that part blank. Mostly. 

I went to hand in my survey to the guy, but then I was like,

"Can I mail mine in? I have some more I want to say." 

"I don't care."