"Youth in Revolt" opens with the obligatory introductory scene in which the hero laments his virginity and his lack of babe-attraction skills. His parents are divorced: His mother (Jean Smart) is a tough blonde who's taken up with a horny, taciturn loser (played, in just a few brief scenes, by hairy fireball Zach Galifianakis). Nick's dad (played, in a stroke of genius casting, by Steve Buscemi) has a new squeeze, a much younger, Playmate-caliber blond (Ari Graynor, who appeared as the endearing, drunken friend in "Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist" ). There's no place for Nick in these mixed-up parental equations, and so when he meets and instantly falls for another misfit, a sly, smart minx named Sheeni Saunders (Portia Doubleday), he dreams of a way for the two of them to be together. The obstacles -- among them Sheeni's disapproving Jesus-freak parents (played by Mary Kay Place and M. Emmett Walsh) and the fact that Sheeni doesn't live in Oakland, where Nick is stuck with his mother -- are so numerous that the desperate Nick dreams up an alter ego for himself. Nick Twisp, with his skinny arms dangling from the sleeves of his nondescript beige polo shirt, becomes Francois Dillinger, a dashing European in a pressed button-down shirt and slim white jeans, which are hemmed just short enough to show off his obviously expensive leather driving mocs. 
 
 But miraculously, Miguel Arteta's "Youth in Revolt," based on C.D. Payne's series of novels about an awkward, brainy kid trying to navigate the godforsaken territory of sex and love, doesn't feel like a superfluous entry in the genre. The picture has enough charm to make us feel something for its shy, gangly protagonist -- who, incidentally, is saddled with the decidedly unsexy name Nick Twisp -- and enough bite to keep us from wanting to kill him: Cera's Nick is cute, but he's not too cute. Getting laid out of pity may be better than not getting laid at all, but "Youth in Revolt" has too much respect for its protagonist to allow that to happen. And 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. 
 
 Maybe the last thing the world needs is another movie about a gawky teenager trying to get laid. Scratch that: Maybe the last thing the world needs is another movie about a gawky teenager trying to get laid when that teenager is played by Michael Cera. 
 
 Did I mention that Francois also has a pencil mustache? While Nick has a natural tendency to hang back, opting for the safe route whenever possible, Francois instead channels the devilish lizard Marcello Mastroianni in "Divorce, Italian Style." Francois has a sense of decorum, but no respect for authority, and he coolly urges Nick to take bigger and decidedly ill-advised chances: The various mishaps and shenanigans dotting the narrative here include theft, arson and cross-dressing, as well as the infiltration of a tony boarding school and several scenes in which Nick is forced to appear in public wearing nothing but undershorts, which, of course, appear to be about two sizes too big for his wispy frame. 
 
 "Youth in Revolt" sometimes works too hard at being quirky: There are places where Arteta, whose previous features include "The Good Girl" (2002) and "Chuck and Buck" (2000), ramps up the story's farcical qualities a bit too aggressively. (Gustin Nash adapted the screenplay.) But the picture strikes the right balance between being good-natured and sharp-edged. When Nick runs into a classmate at a DVD store and shows her his carefully selected choice, "La Strada," she waits a beat before announcing perkily, "So random!" The moment underscores how out of place Nick is, not just in the world of his fellow teenagers, but in the world of adults. He doesn't care that his contemporaries laugh at his DVD choices. But wouldn't it be nice if he could find a soul mate who didn't? 
 
 It's fun to watch Cera as the nerdy, Sinatra-loving underdog, courting the foxy, Belmondo-obsessed Sheeni. But Nick is an unapologetic variation of characters Cera has played before: The commonsensical but uncertain teenage father in "Juno," the nice-guy would-be boyfriend in "Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist." Cera is a good enough actor to know he needs to bring dashes of variety to these roles: He tweaks each character just enough to keep them from sliding into the abyss of the dull stereotype. 
 
 Still, I think many of us have been wondering: What will become of Michael Cera? It's hard to be a sex symbol when you resemble a beatific, unassuming, preadolescent Jesus on a holy card. Cera himself knows what his limitations are. When he appeared on David Letterman the other night, the host wisecracked, "I appreciate your being here -- I know you had to run right over from geography." Cera made a joke of pretending to walk off the set in a huff, but he was a good sport about it. There's nothing for him to do but play the good sport -- the necessity of doing so is written right in the open, searching innocence of his face. 
 
 But "Youth in Revolt" suggests, at least, the possibility of something more for Cera. He won't be able to do much about that baby face. But when he's wearing Francois' Eurowardrobe, his gait and his carriage are different. He has more swagger, more attitude -- in fact, he's more successful at getting at the idea of sexiness than even some so-called sexy actors are. (The handsome but chilly Jude Law, as good an actor as he may sometimes be, comes to mind.) Cera may be reaching the end of road as far as playing the eternally sweet, baffled kid goes. His future may lie in his ability to channel his inner shit. ||||| 'Youth in Revolt' 
 
 During the first week of the new year the movie business traditionally marches off a cliff, falls into a dead zone and flounders there for months, releasing the unreleasable in the hope that moviegoers will be willing to watch the unwatchable. So much for tradition. This week offers a couple of fine new movies—"Youth in Revolt," an endearing coming-of-age comedy starring Michael Cera, and a remarkable German-language drama by Michael Haneke, plus a genre flick from a couple of brothers who thought that the last word about vampires hadn't been said. 
 
 Enlarge Image Close The Weinstein Company Michael Cera gets a touch from Portia Doubleday in 'Youth In Revolt.' 
 
 In one way only, but a significant way, Mr. Cera reminds me of Billie Holiday, who achieved subtle marvels within a severely limited vocal range. His voice is breathy, wistful and piping, yet plaintive and emotive. His abstracted demeanor suggests an emotional range that is narrower still, yet his inhibitions are translucent, rather than opaque; directly behind them, intelligence seethes and passion smolders. It's remarkable that such a singular young actor—he's only 21—should have found so many worthy vehicles ("Superbad," "Juno," "Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist") in such a short time, but he's done it again as Nick Twisp, the hero of "Youth in Revolt," which was directed with impressive flair by Miguel Arteta and adapted by Gustin Nash from the novels by C.D. Payne. 
 
 Nick has intelligence and passion to burn, but nowhere to burn it. He lives with his divorced mother and her scruffy boyfriend, loves classic foreign films, uses elevated language to confide his yearnings to a journal, feigns sophistication with charming haplessness (a casual reference to that craggy icon of American poetry, Bobby Frost) and lusts after a Lolita-like apparition named Sheeni Saunders, who is played delightfully by Portia Doubleday. Her boyfriend, Sheeni says, writes "futurist percussive poetry," and Nick agrees: "He certainly seems to have a gift for smashing ungraceful words together and deeming it a poem." From the moment Sheeni appears in Nick's life, the plot turns on his frantic efforts to follow her to the ends of California, if not the earth, and to obey her taunting injunction to be bad. To that end, Nick invents a mustachioed, Belmondo-cool alter ego, François Dillinger, who sometimes teeters on the edge of silliness. The movie teeters too, but never loses its comic poise. 
 
 Inevitably, Mr. Cera's new film will be compared to "Juno." Both benefit from his sweet-spirited drollery, both revel in rich vocabularies. (I can't resist quoting one more of Nick's deadpan lines: "Like John Muir, I enter the forest with nothing but my journal and a sense of wonder.") The comparison isn't a fair one, given "Juno"'s dramatic complexity, and Ellen Page's virtuosity. "Youth in Revolt" is basically an absurdist ramble, but a terrifically likable ramble with several stretches of lively farce (an incendiary accident, a faux suicide, a nocturnal flight from a private-school dorm); beguiling spurts of animation; an eclectic score (including a Sinatra soundalike, Brigitte Bardot and Jo Stafford singing "My Romance"), and a supporting cast that includes Jean Smart, Mary Kay Place, Zach Galifianakis, Steve Buscemi, Justin Long, Fred Willard, Ray Liotta, M. Emmet Walsh, Adhir Kalyan, Ari Graynor and Erik Knudsen. 
 
 One more thought. If you've been looking for a film whose hero uses the subjunctive frequently and correctly, "Youth in Revolt" is it. 
 
 'The White Ribbon' 
 
 "The White Ribbon," a severe and eerily beautiful German-language drama by Michael Haneke, takes place in a village in northern Germany in the early part of the 20th Century. The village, still quasifeudal in its social structure, suffers a bizarre succession of violent events, and for a while the story functions as a whodunit. Who strung a tripwire that brought down the doctor's galloping horse and injured the doctor? Who set fire to a barn, killed a canary named Peepsie, beat the baron's young son, tortured the midwife's retarded child? Once the real subject emerges, it proves to be both ambiguous and profound: What was done to those who did it, and how did it make them do what they did? 
 
 Sony Pictures Classics Leonard Proxauf as the pastor's son in 'The White Ribbon.' 
 
 If that sounds fashionably vague—or simply obscure—be assured that Mr. Haneke's film is accessible, though its pace is deliberate and its affect muted. ("The White Ribbon," which was shot by Christian Berger, is also a study in the power of black-and-white images.) The narrator, looking back on his days as the village's young schoolteacher and choirmaster, evokes a pitiless microcosm of German life where the milk of human kindness runs icy and thin. 
 
 The doctor, far from doing no harm, inflicts unspeakable psychic violence on the midwife, who has long been his mistress and knows the dark secrets of his domestic life. The pastor seeks to purify his own children with beatings, then rewards them with white ribbons to signify their supposed purification. (A spontaneous act of kindness by the pastor's youngest son elicits nothing more than a cool thank you; whatever his father may have felt goes unexpressed.) The baron casually tyrannizes his beautiful wife, who finally refuses to live in surroundings "that are dominated by malice, envy, apathy and brutality." 
 
 Only the teacher remains immune to the village's disease, a lethal cycle of punishment and retribution; only the teacher grew up elsewhere. Through his generous, inquiring spirit, we come to realize the probable identities of the evildoers. Beyond that, we're brought to understand that their evil has its roots in the prevailing emotional climate of anger, repression and displaced rage. The sins of the fathers are endlessly visited on the sons, and daughters, and it's not for need of a dramatic parenthesis that the film ends with the outbreak of World War I. The village's disease, Mr. Haneke tells us, is the German disease, and the human disease as well. 
 
 'Daybreakers' 
 
 Enlarge Image Close Lionsgate Ethan Hawke and Willem Dafoe take up arms in 'Daybreakers.' 
 
 The vampire franchise didn't lack for attention or support last year, but the German filmmaker brothers Michael and Peter Spierig have come up with a new twist in "Daybreakers." (The film, produced in Australia, is in English.) The year is 2019, and vampires have taken over the world—they offered us a chance to assimilate, but we refused. As the newly dominant species, vamps hunt down humans and farm them, like dairy cows, for their blood. But there's a catch—a blood supply that has dwindled to the vanishing point. (A panhandler's sign says, "Need blood.") If vampirism is to survive, a blood substitute must be found. 
 
 That's a clever idea, as far as it goes, and a pretext for some stylish action (George Liddle did the elegantly noirish production design), accompanied by several solid performances: Sam Neill as the CEO of a pharmaceutical giant, Ethan Hawke as a vampire hematologist with a conflicted soul, Willem Dafoe as an ex-vamp who has managed to be born again human. Still, other performances are pretty dreary (I won't name names, since you wouldn't recognize them anyway) and the idea goes only so far—roughly halfway through the 98-minute running time—in sustaining narrative clarity. "Daybreakers" finally comes up with some comments on the predatory practices of Big Pharma, but that's an awful comedown from the blood-rushing brilliance of the early scenes. 
 
 Write to Joe Morgenstern at joe.morgenstern@wsj.com ||||| Rushed into production to beat the threatened directors’ strike in May 2008, “Youth in Revolt’’ was made well before some of us started getting tired of watching Michael Cera play Michael Cera. Not that he’s bad at it - no one plays him nearly as well. It’s just that Cera doesn’t seem to be able to do anything else, and dorky, passive-aggressive, and adorable has turned into an awfully narrow niche. The actor is starting to seem like a multiplex virus, tainting every movie he’s in. When my daughters heard he was starring in an upcoming movie version of their favorite alt-comic, “Scott Pilgrim vs the World,’’ they clapped their heads and groaned: Another project unnecessarily Cerafied. 
 
 “Youth in Revolt’’ at least lets him play two characters: a prototypical teen dweeb and the dweeb’s malignant inner bad-boy. The former is Nick Twisp, an Oakland 16-year-old with a life that’s a litany of awful: trashy mom (Jean Smart), mom’s beer-swilling con man boyfriend (Zach Galifianakis of “The Hangover’’), uptight dad (Steve Buscemi), dad’s luscious bimbo girlfriend (Ari Graynor). 
 
 The inner bad boy comes to life when Nick meets teenage trailer-park queen Sheeni Saunders (Portia Doubleday) and promptly falls head over heels. Sheeni is poised and a little cruel, alternately tempting and taunting the hero until he dreams up an alter ego to handle the antisocial mischief she craves from him. The alter ego is named Francois, chain-smokes, and has a pencil-thin moustache. Cera drops his voice a half-octave to play him and clearly enjoys the chance to be a jerk; the scenes in which the two sides of Nick argue with each other are almost a debate on the persona of the actor playing him. 
 
 The movie’s based on a popular series of books by C.D. Payne that are smarter, funnier, and more filthy-minded than you’d expect. Screenwriter Gustin Nash and director Miguel Arteta (“Chuck and Buck,’’ “The Good Girl’’) have ported Payne’s acrid dialogue from page to screen and handed it to a cast that knows how to deadpan it back and forth. There are some good, sharp, surprising laughs in “Youth in Revolt.’’ So why does it feel so dreadfully familiar? 
 
 For one thing, because hundreds of movies, from “The Graduate’’ all the way down to half of every year’s Sundance lineup, have driven down to the crossroads of virginal and clever, and the bald patches are starting to show. For another, Sheeni is a nerd’s fantasy with no resemblance to any actual woman (the script lets her name-drop Yasujiro Ozu and Serge Gainsbourg and then, having established her cool cred, never bothers to raise her IQ again). 
 
 And a little of Cera’s minimalist bleat goes a long, long way, even with Francois providing off-key harmony. The funniest moments in “Youth in Revolt’’ come not from the star but from Smart, weepily playing dumb, or Ray Liotta as a short-tempered cop who becomes her new boyfriend, or - wonder of wonders - Fred Willard as an aging lefty neighbor who in one exquisite scene is glimpsed face-down on the carpet in his underwear, tranced out on ’shrooms. 
 
 A little more of that madness might have made “Youth’’ as subversive as it thinks it is. Instead, the movie’s a revolt in which no one gets hurt or challenged, least of all the man-child at its center or the boychik playing him. 
 
 Ty Burr can be reached at tburr@globe.com. 
 
 © Copyright 2010 Globe Newspaper Company.
– Youth in Revolt was shot in early 2008, which, Ty Burr of the Boston Globe notes, was “before some of us started getting tired of watching Michael Cera play Michael Cera.” If you aren’t tired of Cera’s adorably dorky shtick, you’ll find Youth a sharp and funny, if familiar, effort. Here’s what critics are saying: Miraculously, Youth “has enough charm to make us feel something for its shy, gangly protagonist,” writes Stephanie Zacharek for Salon, “and enough bite to keep us from wanting to kill him.” It’s “basically an absurdist ramble, but a terrifically likable ramble” writes Joe Morgenstern of the Wall Street Journal, “If you’ve been looking for a film whose hero uses the subjunctive frequently and correctly, Youth in Revolt is it.” But that was a turnoff for Ann Hornaday of the Washington Post. “The characters all seem to be speaking in the same arch, hyper-literary drone,” she complains. The story, a tired Catcher in the Rye rehash, “feels written rather than lived."