Youth in Revolt (Miguel Arteta, 2009): USA

Reviewed by Tamara Mamukelashvili. Viewed at Grauman Chinese theater, AFI Film Festival, Hollywood.

A young team of actors take us on a great journey of their teenage, young and full of  adventurous moments of their lives.

Youth In Revolt is a movie that any age of audience would enjoy. It’s entertaining, it has a very realistic story line that young teenagers can relate to and has great mixture of real life and animation.  As the teenagers are trying to be adults that think are grown up and can handle things their own, visually, the element of the animation shows that their still kids. I personally thought that was done very interestingly. It’s about things every teenagers go through as their entering the new world, meeting new people and worry about things that for them seems to be the most important issues in their lives. E.g finishing high school being a virgin is the end of their lives.

I think this movie was very entertaining as most of the time audience, including me was laughing and enjoying the silliness  of the main character played by Michael Cera. All the actors had a great performances. They were lost into their characters, as all the characters in the movie were very unique. It was very interesting seeing world with their eyes. Which also was very interesting the way it was shown visually as the main character had an imaginary alter-ego  of himself to make him feel more confident and do things that he never thought he would do.

This movie wasn’t really the deep artistic movie that audience would see at the film festivals that are received from all over the world. It was the movie that you enjoy and have fun watching with a very interesting plot-line and great performances.

It’s also interesting how good and bad is shown in the film. That in that age, if you want to have a girlfriend or make girl make interested in you, you have to be bad, as teenagers think those type are more fun, experienced and interesting to hang out with. Which is pretty sad, but if we think about it is kind of true.

This film takes audience on a very interesting journey, that shows world into many different colors that make sense and means something to many people in different ways. Director also did a great job casting such talented young actors that did amazing job and made us laugh. Teenage years are big deal, and now looking back on it, it makes us smile. I enjoyed watching this movie very much. I thought it had a lot to look up to. I recommend to watch this film for all of the reasons above. very well done. Great visual elements, amazing performance and very enjoyable story line.