Youth in Revolt Reviews
Top Critic
The tone throughout is moderately quirky rather than full-on teen-flick vulgarian, bolstered by indie-cred cameos.
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| Original Score: 3/5
I love this new breed of dirty movie. It goes beyond leering, beyond sexism, to the core tension of a culture that ricochets between Puritanism and promiscuity. And it has in Michael Cera a sterling mascot.
A clever and often riotous burst of cynicism that pushes, let's face it, some pretty questionable ideas.
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| Original Score: 3/4
Cera may be trapped in his unchanging persona, but no more than this picture is walled in by its sitcom conventions.
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| Original Score: 2/4
Youth in Revolt is a teen fantasy filled with lust, imagination, frustration and lots of laughs, artfully made and superbly played.
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| Original Score: B+
A sweet and slight and often charming coming-of-age tale.
| Original Score: 4/5
Some may find such elements desperate or calculated in their quirky-cuteness, but I think they add to the movie's efforts to evoke the surrealism and excruciating intensity of, as the title puts it, youth in revolt.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4.5/5
Mildly diverting rather than uproarious, the film still stands out among teen sex comedies for its low-key approach to antic material.
From The Catcher in the Rye to Rushmore, it's a story we've seen in better versions before.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
The studio's lackluster release will likely mean it'll thrive on DVD. Don't wait for that. Youth in Revolt is worth making a trip to the theaters.
Uneven but occasionally quite funny...
It's an amusing concept as far as it goes, although it doesn't go far enough.
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
Francois ultimately resembles every other character Cera has played, only with a mustache and a dirtier mouth. If he wants to show us what else he can do, he'll need to stage a much bigger rebellion than this.
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| Original Score: 2/5
It's a pleasant surprise to see the engaging, soft-spoken star of Superbad and Juno stretch and play a devil-may-care slimeball.
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
An improbable but hilarious combine of losin'-it comedies and the rarefied, Europhile air of the Cinema du Twee.
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| Original Score: 3.5/4
I laughed a fair bit. That's no ringing endorsement, but it's January.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
Director Miguel Arteta, working from a tight script by Gustin Nash, tinges the mirth with malice. Sweet.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
Youth in Revolt is basically an absurdist ramble, but a terrifically likable ramble with several stretches of lively farce...
Between delightful sequences of animation, vibrant performances by the likes of Justin Long, Fred Willard and Ray Liotta, and Arteta's mastery over comic tones ranging from the sensitive to the surreal, this is the rare movie one doesn't want to end.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/4
Although director Miguel Arteta's adaptation of C.D. Payne's cult-fave book series brings little new to the coming-of-age comedy genre, it's hard not to be beguiled by Youth in Revolt.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
Perhaps this all works better on the printed page, where readers don't actually have to watch the character behave so rudely. (Or better before Cera rewrote much of the script.)
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
There are some good, sharp, surprising laughs in Youth in Revolt. So why does it feel so dreadfully familiar?
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
The picture has enough charm to make us feel something for its shy, gangly protagonist, and enough bite to keep us from wanting to kill him.
Youth in Revolt follows what happens when a good kid turns hilariously rotten for the sake of love.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
It's not that the film is fatally flawed, but the tone is uneven, the satire is blunt, the comedy rarely generates more than feeble laughs, and the lead character never comes fully to life.
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
Cera's style lends itself to one note, and the movie wisely gives him another character to play, an imaginary alter ego named Francois Dillinger, inspired by Jean-Paul Belmondo.
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| Original Score: 3/4
Areta's film has whimsy and a few great lines, but not enough originality.
Doubleday's Sheeni is charming, smart and pretty and has just that hint of knowing danger that drives teenage boys insane. And Cera? No one does this kind of thing better, which is presumably why he keeps doing it.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/5
Truth is, there's also too much Michael Cera. Which isn't the star's fault. I blame the movie's bad timing, and its delayed release.
Full Review
| Original Score: C+
"Punk" and "rebel" don't belong in the same sentence with "Michael Cera." But somehow, they connect in the few-holds-barred teen comedy Youth in Revolt.
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
Nash and director Miguel Arteta try too hard; they want their movie branded a cult favorite before anyone's even seen it.
It's a kick to see Cera cut loose from his patented befuddled-nerd routine, even if the film's caricatured performances and fish-in-a-barrel scorn are sure to be monotonous for some.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
The collision of adolescent hormones and parental folly, hardly new cinematic territory, gets a bracing absurdist slant in Youth in Revolt.
Cera and his gifted comic co-stars elevate the mediocre source material into a semi-iconic coming-of-age story.
