The coolest thing about "Youth In Revolt" is its title. It's a throwback to those cautionary movies of yore such as "Reefer Madness."

In a sense, it is a cautionary movie because its hero makes such dumb choices. Hormones will indeed make you crazy.

Michael Cera ("Juno") plays Nick Twisp. Cera is to nerds what George Clooney is to leading men. This is another Cera stock character, an awkward but eloquent loser looking to divest himself of his virginity. Based on the book series by C.D. Payne and directed by Miguel Arteta, "Revolt" offers some sporadic laughs but seldom a sense of reality.

Nick's aging and desperate mother (Jean Smart) and her loutish boyfriend take him on vacation to a trailer park. Near their battered single-wide live the Saunderses in a two-story trailer.

Daddy Saunders is a lawyer played by M. Emmet Walsh and mom is played by Mary Kay Place. Part of the movie's odd conceit is that lawyers who can send their kids to prep school live in trailer parks. The movie gives no back story to explain any of this.

The Saunderses are merely there so Nick can lose his mind over their daughter, Sheeni. She's played by Portia Doubleday and she's a certified cutie pie. Nick loves Frank Sinatra and Federico Fellini movies. Sheeni's a Francophile who loves French singer Serge Gainsourg and French New Wave movies. Huh?

Trouble is, Sheeni's dating Mr. Wonderful and Nick figures he hasn't got a chance. So he decides to become a bad boy to gain her respect and her proximity by getting himself thrown out of his mother's house.

Consequently, he invents an alter ego, a cigarette-puffing, mustached troublemaker. Cera names his new personality Francois and he depends on him to launch Nick into a series of felonious actions to win the girl of his dreams.

Is this a stretch? Yes. Does it bring up issues of mental illness that the movie never addresses? Yes. Does it make sense and does it work? No.

Arteta ("The Good Girl") introduces some quirky visuals but never gets as much as he could out of a first-string cast. Cera's one-trick-pony is up to the job. But Steve Buscemi, Fred Willard, Ray Liotta, Place, Smart and others are given little to work with. They're one-trick ponies as well.

Despite the movie's reach for originality, it offers a lot of genre cliches. Consider the ultra-religious Saunderses getting ripped on stuffed, psychedelic mushrooms prepared by their dopester son as an appetizer on Thanksgiving. When it comes to teen movies, this is old school.