The youth are revolting

The problem with “Youth in Revolt”? Not enough revolt.

It’s a placid comedy, cool and tranquil, when it needs to be strong, vibrant, exciting. Or, failing that, funny.

I’m all for smart, subtle comedy, but “Youth in Revolt” is too subtle and not smart enough. It’s like someone telling you a joke that you know could be funnier and told better. It’s a good set-up, it just needs a killer punch line.

Michael Cera stars as that Michael Cera character he has now played in about three movies too many. He’s a brainy, sweet, nerdy teenager who favors the music of Frank Sinatra and the movies of Fellini and is therefore a virgin. He is also only 16, but in today’s teen sex comedies, that is the equivalent of being a spinster.

This is an important point. Not the part about the spinsters, but that “Youth in Revolt” is basically a teen sex comedy. And yet, it isn’t raunchy, it isn’t horny, it barely has a pulse. It’s “Slow Times at Ridgemont High.”

Our hero, Nick, goes to a trailer park where he meets his soul mate Sheeni, played by Portia Doubleday. She likes Jean-Paul Belmondo and Serge Gainsbourg and records on vinyl. It’s probably supposed to be funny that such an exotic and sophisticated creature should have fundamentalist parents and live in a trailer park, which manages to be condescending on several different levels at once.

Love is in the air, but the Belmondo- and Gainsbourg-loving Sheeni inexplicably keeps pressing Nick to be bad. So he invents an alter ego (also played by Cera) who needs to be hilarious for the comedy to work. He isn’t, and it doesn’t. But in the guise of being bad, Nick does some truly horrendous, unforgivable things. What is meant to be merely a lovable flaw in his plan instead turns him into a hateful psychopath. Isn’t that funny?

An impressive supporting cast is wasted in a wide variety of roles. Nick’s divorced parents are played by Mary Kay Place and M. Emmet Walsh, with Justin “Mac” Long as their stoner son who supplies all the characters with magic mushrooms. The resulting psilocybin scenes are a perfect example of what is wrong with the film: They aren’t a funny idea in the first place, they’ve been done before, and they don’t go far enough to look for laughs.

Instead, we get the horrifying image of M. Emmet Walsh smearing mashed potatoes all over his face. There are some things that, once seen, can never be unseen.

Director Miguel Arteta’s sole stylistic plan seems to be to film as much as he can in slow motion in the hopes that something will look funnier that way. He also directs with such a carefree attitude toward lighting that it comes as a genuine shock to see a couple of lighting technicians listed in the credits. Honestly, what did they do all day?