Nick Twisp is a teenager clever beyond his years and a hopeless romantic trying to live a normal teenage sex life implied by pop culture. When his mother's new boyfriend has to lay low, they take a trip to a lake where he meets and falls in love with an equally clever teenage girl. When his nice guy ways turn her off, he creates a Tyler Durden-esque alter ego in order to impress her.
It gets some credit for not wallowing in too many teen sex romp cliches. Its humor is powered mostly by quirk and wit than shock value and vulgarity. Yet, it only delivers a few genuine laughs. The embarassing moments get too embarassing resulting in pure awkwardness. The attempts at romance in the midst of sexual encounters seems forced and ingenuine. The plot is too episodic like watching a series of shorts in a row. A series of animated segues do the pacing no favors. With the back up of a great cast and successful original material, it is hard to imagine a movie would fail so badly.
Michael Cera needs a new role quick. Something that is not a quick-witted but soft spoken geeky nice guy. It is getting kind of tired. Not even his cliched bad guy alter ego could save him. He was completely unconvincing and ultimately annoying. Both Cera and co-stars seem too long-winded, speaking more important than they actually are. The pretentiousness is hard to stomach, and hinders many of the characters from being relatable. Ray Liotta, Steve Buscemi, Zach Galifinakis, and Fred Willard make memorable turns, but all are extraordinaryly underused in favor of less funny leads. By the end of the feature, I felt very little for any of the characters. I had completely checked out of the film.
This is easily one of the least memorable films of all time.
1/10
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