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Youth in Revolt
Metascore
63 out of 100

Generally favorable reviews - based on 35 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 25 out of 35
  2. Mixed: 10 out of 35
  3. Negative: 0 out of 35
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  1. St. Louis Post-Dispatch
    Reviewed by: Calvin Wilson
    100
    Bursting with smart dialogue, surprising situations and humor that springs from richly imagined characters.
  2. New York Post
    Reviewed by: Kyle Smith
    88
    An improbable but hilarious combine of losin'-it comedies and the rarefied, Europhile air of the Cinema du Twee.
  3. Empire
    Reviewed by: Andrew Male
    80
    It's chaotic and episodic, but this is Cera's star turn. "Superbad" meets "Fight Club?" That'll do it.
  4. Chicago Sun-Times
    Reviewed by: Roger Ebert
    75
    One of the secrets of Youth in Revolt is that Nick seems bewildered by his own desires and strategies. He knows how he feels, he knows what he wants, but he'd need a map to get from A to B. It's his self-abasing modesty that makes the movie work. Here, you feel, is a movie character who would find more peace on the radio.
  5. Miami Herald
    Reviewed by: Rene Rodriguez
    75
    The slight but enjoyable Youth in Revolt finds plenty of mayhem to take advantage of Cera's against-type performance. Oh, the things we do for love.
  6. Philadelphia Inquirer
    Reviewed by: Steven Rea
    75
    Some tacky animated sequences notwithstanding, Youth in Revolt is smart, cool and frequently hysterical.
  7. San Francisco Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Amy Biancolli
    75
    A clever and often riotous burst of cynicism that pushes some pretty questionable ideas.
  8. New Orleans Times-Picayune
    Reviewed by: Mike Scott
    75
    Cera exudes a geeky charm and tender vulnerability that's hard to resist -- probably because he's far easier to relate to for most of us than we'd like to admit.
  9. Portland Oregonian
    Reviewed by: Shawn Levy
    75
    It's not earth-shaking, but it's diverting and polished.
  10. The Hollywood Reporter
    Reviewed by: Sheri Linden
    70
    The collision of adolescent hormones and parental folly, hardly new cinematic territory, gets a bracing absurdist slant in Youth in Revolt.
  11. Arizona Republic
    Reviewed by: Bill Goodykoontz
    70
    It does give Cera a chance to play at being a bad boy. But it's just that - playing at it.
  12. Salon.com
    Reviewed by: Stephanie Zacharek
    70
    Along the way, it even gives the adorable manchild Michael Cera the chance to reinvent himself as a possible sex symbol -- in other words, it allows him to be a man.
  13. New York Magazine (Vulture)
    Reviewed by: David Edelstein
    70
    Miguel Arteta's rollicking Youth in Revolt is one of several recent movies to elevate the generic coming-of-age teen sex comedy to a plane of surrealism.
  14. The New York Times
    Reviewed by: Manohla Dargis
    70
    Sweet and slight and often charming coming-of-age tale.
  15. Variety
    Reviewed by: Peter Debruge
    70
    Cera and his gifted comic co-stars elevate the mediocre source material into a semi-iconic coming-of-age story.
  16. Wall Street Journal
    Reviewed by: Joe Morgenstern
    70
    Youth in Revolt is basically an absurdist ramble, but a terrifically likable ramble.
  17. Chicago Reader
    Reviewed by: Cliff Doerksen
    70
    Mildly diverting rather than uproarious, the film still stands out among teen sex comedies for its low-key approach to antic material. The best bits are supplied by Justin Long as Doubleday's stoner brother and Adhir Kalyan as the hero's plummy-accented coconspirator.
  18. Austin Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Kimberley Jones
    67
    It's an enjoyable enough exercise in teen angst triumphing.
  19. The A.V. Club
    Reviewed by: Nathan Rabin
    67
    Arteta's well-intentioned film version feels simultaneously overstuffed and undercooked.
  20. Rolling Stone
    Reviewed by: Peter Travers
    63
    It's a bitch telling a coming-of-age story minus clichés and sappiness. So Youth in Revolt, with Michael Cera in his best performance yet, is a small miracle.
  21. Chicago Tribune
    Reviewed by: Michael Phillips
    63
    Youth in Revolt isn't bad -- the cast is too good for it to be bad.
  22. USA Today
    Reviewed by: Claudia Puig
    63
    Youth's screenplay, by Gustin Nash, is generally witty.
  23. Boston Globe
    Reviewed by: Ty Burr
    63
    There are some good, sharp, surprising laughs in Youth in Revolt. So why does it feel so dreadfully familiar?
  24. ReelViews
    Reviewed by: James Berardinelli
    63
    From the beginning, it's apparent that there's something "off" about Youth in Revolt. 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.
  25. Orlando Sentinel
    Reviewed by: Roger Moore
    63
    Equal parts inspired and irresponsible, the new film from Miguel Arteta (director of the cult hit 'Chuck and Buck') turns C.D. Payne's books into a hit-or-miss homage to that French classic of outlaw love, 'Breathless.'
  26. Time Out New York
    Reviewed by: Keith Uhlich
    60
    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.
  27. Boxoffice Magazine
    Reviewed by: Amy Nicholson
    60
    Payne's book is more epic and shameless than Gustin Nash's tidy adaptation.
  28. Time
    Reviewed by: Mary Pols
    60
    Uneven but occasionally quite funny.
  29. Entertainment Weekly
    Reviewed by: Lisa Schwarzbaum
    58
    Timing is everything. And Youth in Revolt is late -- arriving not just at the tail end of the star's sell-by date for this particular kind of character, but more importantly at the tail end of the intended audience's attention span for an inconsequential Sundance-y tale of sexual coming-of-age.
  30. Washington Post
    Reviewed by: Ann Hornaday
    50
    A movie that feels written rather than lived; from "The Catcher in the Rye" to "Rushmore," it's a story we've seen in better versions before.
  31. The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
    Reviewed by: Rick Groen
    50
    In Youth in Revolt , Cera bellies up to the same table once too often. His fresh-faced act is starting to look really stale.
  32. Village Voice
    Reviewed by: Robert Wilonsky
    50
    Winded and weary from its long journey to a bigger screen, the three-books-in-one has been squeezed into a 90-minute Cliff's Notes version starring Michael Cera as Every Role Michael Cera's Ever Had.
  33. The New Yorker
    Reviewed by: Anthony Lane
    50
    Cera can be winning enough, with his flat-toned goofiness, in films like "Superbad," but there's only just enough of the guy to fill out one dramatis persona; two at once prove to be beyond him. [11 Jan. 2010, p.83]
    All this critic's reviews
  34. Christian Science Monitor
    Reviewed by: Peter Rainer
    50
    Just sweet enough to avoid being negligible.
  35. New York Daily News
    Reviewed by: Elizabeth Weitzman
    40
    While Cera is charming enough to keep us watching, he's never allowed to cut loose -- even though that's supposed to be the whole point of the movie.
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User Reviews

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User Score
6.6 out of 10

Generally favorable reviews- based on 77 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 13 out of 17
  2. Mixed: 2 out of 17
  3. Negative: 2 out of 17
  1. TimG.
    5
    The movie is too busy trying to be artistic to succeed in actually being funny.
  2. BobbyS.
    10
    Awesome movie freakin hilarious.
  3. RodrigoBGC
    3
    Im tire of stupid comedy, stupid jokes and unreal situations when anithing happens and everything ends on a stupid way, i give it 3/10 because this movie is just stuip… Full Review »
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