The Barbican. What a strange place. A maze-like 70s housing estate in the middle of the City, with a charming if semi-deserted (on a Sunday afternoon anyway) cultural centre. If Land of the Dead had been made in Britain, it would have been set in the Barbican. Still, who'd say no to a flat situated on the edge of the central lake, waking up every morning to an avenue of fountains and the water lapping just below your window?
But I digress; in one of the Barbican's cosy cinemas I saw Youth in Revolt, that rarest of things - a funny film comedy. Incredibly for a recent US effort it does not feature Seth Rogen, Steve Carell, Adam Sandler, Ben Stiller, Paul Rudd or any of the funny-five-years-ago but now dreadfully over-exposed Frat Pack. Unless you count Michael Cera, who I suppose is the thin, thinking man's Seth Rogen.
Cera, an actor in his 20s doomed to play 16 year olds for a good few years yet, plays a geeky loser called Nick Twisp who devises a cool, criminally inclined alternative persona to help him win the beautiful Sheeni. There's nothing amazingly original here, although some of the dialogue is pleasingly quirky, but there's a freshness and amiability about this movie - a massive contrast to the bloated and self-indulgent Funny People which I also saw recently - that makes it well worth a look.
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