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Ah, another awkward Michael Cera character. True, but Youth in Revolt one-ups the young actor's typical introvert-chic with a surreal alter-ego. Cera plays a lovelorn teen named Nick Twisp who falls hard for a girl named Sheeni who appears as composed and mature as he is self-conscious.

Portia Doubleday plays Sheeni with a curious mix of free spirit and severe Francophile, the kind of teenager in love with everything far away because projecting fantasies is safer and easier than dealing with the doldrums and dramas of reality. Nick and Sheeni spend a day at the lake together, then and only then does she drop the cruelest bombshell: she has a boyfriend.

Despite this, Nick is instantly taken with Sheeni, and whether she is responding to his earnest pursuit of her or simply toying with him because she's bored is largely unclear. So her motives are mysterious when they are separated after a week spent together, and they hatch a risky plan to reunite. First, Sheeni has to hook up Nick's father with a job in her town, but then Nick must find a way to get his mother to kick him out so he can go live with his dad. Sheeni pulls some strings with her boyfriend's father's company and has Nick's dad hired on.

Tasked with keeping Sheeni's fleeting attention and causing a ruckus on the home front, introverted Nick creates an alter ego named Francois Dillinger to do his dirty work for him. Dillinger is a rake and a troublemaker straight out of one of Sheeni's beloved Truffaut films, and it is this Fight Club-like element that puts Cera in scenes acting opposite himself and provides the film a much needed spark.

After stealing a car and starting a $5 million fire, Nick's unstable mother sends him packing to his father's house and Sheeni's arms. Unfortunately, Nick is also on the run from the law, and Sheeni's conservative parents send her away to a French-style boarding school to keep the two apart.

While the script is thin and loose, the supporting cast is notable: particularly Nick's mother's two beaus: first a sketchy Zach Galifianakis and then Ray Liotta's alpha-male cop. The always interesting Steve Buscemi and Fred Willard pop up too-few times as Nick's father and an oddball neighbor, respectively, but Justin Long's druggie brother to Sheeni is a waste of screen time and only grinds things to a halt.

For such a bizarre film filled with surreal and darkly comic asides, the end comes to a common, and slightly clichéd resolution, when both drop their misguided pretensions and look at each other for who they really are for the very first time. Well, Sheeni does at least. Nick still annoyingly gazes at her like she's someone other than the emotionally distant girl who just put him and his psyche through hell. If he had, it would have been a more mature ending, showing Nick move through a rite of passage for growing up, even if it was a lesson learned the hardest way. Because relationships are not about finding someone who is everything you want. It's about finding someone who wants what you want, and figuring out how to achieve those things together.

I wouldn't recommend this film to anyone except Juno diehards or The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo fanatics who want to get an advance glimpse—and her role here offers more than a glimpse, mind you—at the new Lisbeth Salander in David Fincher's highly-anticipated Stieg Larsson adaptation. Youth in Revolt is certainly daring and imaginative, so while the results don't always impress, it's the kind of creativity that is always welcome to see make it to the big screen.