Leading global energy sources: oil, coal and embarrassingly prolonged teen-boy virginity. The combustible latter fuels “Youth in Revolt” — an improbable but hilarious combine of losin’-it comedies and the rarefied, Europhile air of the Cinema du Twee.
It’s Wes Anderson minus the angst. I have little doubt that “Youth in Revolt” will sail far over the heads of most of today’s youth, to their eternal shame and taste-damnation. The only moment in the movie that seems remotely realistic comes when a girl notes an intellectual classmate’s choice of “La Strada” in the video store, breaks into fits of embarrassment giggles and blurts, “That’s so random!”
The lad of letters is Nick Twisp (Michael Cera): seeker, aesthete, virgin. He boils with hormonal surges, yet his wrath is impotent. Among those he would smite are his slutty mom (Jean Smart), her truck-driver boyfriend (Zach Galifianakis), her cop boyfriend (Ray Liotta). A vacation sojurn to a “cabin” in the woods — actually, a trailer in a land of lost souls called Restless Axles — redirects his trajectory to cross that of one Sheeni Saunders (a canny Portia Doubleday, in her first major role), who is not only adorable but, unlike Nick, can correctly identify the director of “Tokyo Story.” Alas, she has a boyfriend (“he writes futurist percussive poetry”) so permanent Nick seems to have little chance with her. Unless he can meet Sheeni’s demands to “be bad, Nick. Very, very bad.”
He obliges by creating an alter ego, “François Dillinger,” an insouciant white-pantsed rebel with the kind of mustache that suggests a fondness for Nestle’s Quik rather than successful completion of puberty. But François also has an arrogant way with a cigarette and a facility for naughty badinage.
The two of them — Nick and his shadow — go roaming the paths that outlaws tread, scheming to win Sheeni’s hand by getting Nick thrown out of his house, her thrown out of her French-immersion prep school, and her preppy boyfriend left alone to ponder his futurist word-smashing.
What is most refreshing about Twee Cinema — the Quirkist School — is that, when they work, films like “Juno” and “Rushmore” find the comedy in youth aching to be older, casting off plumes of weirdness in all directions by reversing the American norm. Nick savors Sinatra records while Sheeni is partial to Serge Gainsbourg and Jean-Paul Belmondo.
“Juno” and “(500) Days of Summer” forced many of their lines, and their contrivances often seemed . . . contrived. (Take the bursting-into-song sequence in “Summer.”) “Youth in Revolt” features animated sequences choreographed to the kind of alt-rock that sounds like wounded birds afraid to leave the nest, but they’re funny and endearing, as is the arch dialogue.
Every scene has lines fit for Bartlett’s, the cool edition: “Bernice, you sweet angel of the lavatory!” “Like John Muir, I enter the wilderness with nothing more than my journal and a childlike sense of wonder.” “Kiss me, you weenie” effectively deflates a moment, while a reference to the ursine Galifianakis as “my mother’s consort” absurdly elevates him.
Questions of taste could have smothered the film, but director Miguel Arteta leaves the art direction, the hip soundtrack and the oddball references to support his stars rather than compete with them. The focus remains on who the characters are and what they want. These teens may name their dogs after Camus, but their goals are pure “Superbad.”