My 0-10 quality rating:  8
Genre: Comedy
 Director: Miguel Arteta
Screenplay: Gustin Nash, Miguel Arteta, Michael Cera
Starring: Michael Cera, Portia Doubleday, Steve Buscemi, Ray Liotta,
       M. Emmet Walsh, Justin Long, Jean Smart, Mary Kay Place
Time: 1 hr., 30 min.
Rating: R (sexual content, explicit intercourse in animated cartoons,
       vulgarity, drug use)

By Marty Meltz

     High humor literacy level, a cornucopia of sophisticated quips, and original concept in delightfully deadpan delivery makes this a ribald laugh fest for smart, quick-witted and hip adults. For teenagers? Only if you're unusually perceptive and culturally aware.

     "Youth in Revolt" is an exceptionally clever poker-faced comedy which is meaningless by plot description but everything by its delivery. It proposes to show that teenagers, in thinking of themselves as considerably smarter and more savvy than grown-ups, inevitably, being ill-equipped in doing that, wind up as selfish, short-sighted bunglers who show themselves as precisely the opposite.
     The plot, based on the C.D. Payne cult book series, is about 14-year-old Nick Twisp (Michael Cera), a young lad with variously unformed notions, one of them, partially true, that everybody's getting more sex than he is.
       The film is totally confident in itself in playing to cultural sophisticates and diehard cynics using elitist verbal references in myriad rapid-fire jabs and joshes. Michael Cera is more than up to his refined performance tasks
     
      14-year-old Nick lives with his lowbrow aging mom Estelle (Jean Smart) in an Oakland trailer home, and her white trash long-haul truck driver boyfriend Jerry (Zach Galifianakis). Nick is an aficionado of Sinatra, fine literature, foreign films and Fellini. This doesn't make Nick at all popular.  George, his dad (Steve Buscemi) living elsewhere, is rolling with Lacey (Ari Graynor) who's half his age.
      Matters take dicey turns in young Nick's life when he has to join Jerry and his mom on vacation, staying at a Christian trailer park. First love smacks Nick hard as he falls instantly for Sheeni Saunders (Portia Doubleday) who's the daughter of fundamentalist parents (Mary Kay Place and M. Emmet Walsh) who live in an upscale complex trailer home nearby. They don't like Nick -- at all.
      But Sheeni fits perfectly into Nick's high-level tastes as she loves all things French and dreams of living in Paris. Sheeni, with some advanced sexual understandings for one her age, also fantasizes being whooshed away by a handsome, suave, adventuresome boy named Francois. And unfortunately for Nick, Sheeni already is seeing Trent (Jonathan Wright), an insufferably pompous prep boy. When it's time to return from the vacation, the Sheeni thing seems doomed.
      Nick opts for an alter-ego. Like how about a figment named Francois Dillinger?  He'll be complete with cigarette, moustache and white pants. He will be at Nick's side to aid him in becoming a "bad boy" who can get thrown out by mom so he can stay with dad, who lives near Sheeni.  Dad doesn't want him.  Not surprisingly, Nick is headed down a wayward road to real trouble.
     When his mom's slobbish Jerry dies out on the road somewhere she tries to make it with Lance (Ray Liotta), a low-minded cop who's investigating the bizarre million-dollar damage Nick has perpetrated. Nick, in fact, is in hiding from the police, this in his dad's house which is right near that trailer park where he'd met Sheeni.  Her parents, who despise Nick and learn of what  he's done as a bad boy, forbid their getting together. Is that going to stop the lovers from doing it before he gets sent up to juvenile detention?
    
      The film lurches into one comically fertile situation after another. Portia Doubleday, playing the teenager as equally distant from her parents' alien values as is Nick, does a smooth, serviceable and sexy job of it. Steve Buscemi, a master film bit player (but supreme as the conspirator in "Fargo"), needs more substantial script material. Jean Smart lays into her role with just the right mixed energy to draw both your sympathy and disgust.
    Michael Cera has precisely the restraint and projection necessary for bone-dry comedy.
      Hang in there for every line. Sometime you're laughing right into the next gag and may miss it. The film recollects "Napoleon Dynamite" in its straight-faced take on the natural comedy and tragedy of being an adolescent. Most of us have been there.

Marty Meltz, www.martymoviereviews.com -- Marty Meltz was the 30-year films critic for the Award-winning Maine Sunday Telegram till the column was budget cut on Dec. 31, 2007.