6/10
Fight Club meets Looking for Eric in brainy-dweeb teen comedy.
Michael Vera plays Nick Twisp, a guy whose life (and name) is less then ideal. His mum is shagging a fat bearded trucker; his dad is shacked up with a younger woman; and being intelligent is no substitute for being tough and cool. So when he meets Sheeni at a trailer park, and she seems to like him, he thinks his prayers have been answered. But she needs him to be bad (her hero is Jean-Paul Belmondo), and Nick is a good boy. So he invents an alter ego, Francois Dillinger, with pencil moustache, dark glasses and an eternal cigarette. Francois is happy to be bad.
It's the details that make or break a film like this, and - apart from the heard-it-before indie soundtrack - this is pretty good. Michael Cera does what he does best, being himself, and he has more than adequate support from older character actors. For this kind of movie, I prefer Adventureland (releases on DVD right now), but this is still pretty decent.
