It’s a quintessential coming of age story revolving around sex, sex, and more sex.

The average (sex) teen-aged boy thinks (sex) about sex (sex) every 7 seconds (sex). While this might be an old wives’ tale (like that one about hairy palms) you wouldn’t know it from Youth in Revolt. It’s a quintessential coming of age story revolving around sex, sex, and more sex.

Nick Twisp (Michael Cera) is an awkward teen who dreams of beautiful women and his insecure charm somehow makes him irresistible. Hard to imagine Cera in this role, right? When the boyfriend (The Hangover’s Zach Galifianakis) of Nick’s mom (Jean Smart) pisses off some Navy boys, they head for RV land, where Nick falls for the princess in the park, Sheeni (Portia Doubleday). In an effort to combat his good boy imagine, Nick creates a French alter-ego, Francois Dillinger. Sporting tight white pants, loafers with no socks, a thin mustache and the ever-present cigarette, Cera really walks the European or gay line.

Director Miguel Arteta (The Good Girl) manages to pull together a charming movie out of a whole lot of mess. Based on a novel by C.D. Payne, Nick’s life makes the antics of the American Pie guys look tame in comparison. Part Road Trip and part Sybil, Nick and Francois really step in it in their attempt to get in it. Though never treated seriously, buildings blow up, significant others die, kids drug parents, kids drug each other…and so on. It’s hard to keep track of who violates which penal codes.

Most the movie rests of Cera being his usual character from “Arrested Development,” Juno, Superbad, Nick and Norah’s…you get the picture. At least when he’s playing Francois he gets to embrace his inner-juvenile delinquent. It’s a nice, albeit brief, reprieve from Cera’s ah-shucks mumbling, but even Nick’s fumbling lessens as the film matures. It’s a glimmer that Cera isn’t one note; now he just needs a good break-out role like Helena Bonham Carter in Fight Club.

The supporting cast of characters is especially rich, which makes Youth in Revolt fun in unexpected ways. Galifianakis is much more subdued than he was in The Hangover, but still has perfect timing. Smart is wonderfully trashy as Nick’s mom, and Steve Buscemi, Best in Show’s Fred Willard, and Justin Long are all priceless. They each represent a gem that ultimately make the film sparkle.

The split screen work to get Nick and Francois together is a bit shaky at times – The Parent Trap might have done it better back in 1961. And Gollum’s two sides in the Lord of the Rings film was more nuanced than Nick’s inner-conflict. As endearing as Youth in Revolt ultimately is, it’s still just a trailer-park sex story about misbehaving teens and adults with no parental skills. Much of the humor is simple dick and sex jokes, but occasionally a line or situation is too frickin’ funny not to laugh out loud. And it’s downright adorable to see the extremes that a boy will go to in order to win the heart of the girl he loves (sex).