6) Youth in Revolt
Michael Cera seemed to be everywhere in 2009. I think most movie enthusiasts were suffering from Cera fatigue. It didn’t help that Youth in Revolt was basically marketed on his back, screaming in commercials “Hey! Michael Cera is being a little different here because he’s acting as an alter ego to his usual socially awkward character! Check it!” This didn’t work, because it wasn’t interesting enough to entice people into seeing the it, and it was also misleading for people who did decide to indeed check it.
In some cases though, this served as a pleasant surprise—rather than being faced with a dumb Superbad rehash, audiences were treated to a remarkably smart and interesting teen comedy that actually wants to examine the nature of teenage masculine identity to an extent, through the trope of the “nice guy.” It dismantles the notion that a “nice guy” is somehow nobler than the douchebags that the girls fawn over, framing him instead as just having too much insecurity and not enough confidence or shamelessness to pull off the asshole card. And it does this with a really hilarious plot and some really funny observational stuff that works well with some of its weirder elements.
