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So, the backlash against Michael Cera has begun. It might be in full-force, actually.

Backlashes are rather inevitable when it comes to young actors who rise to fame on a string of filmic and televisual critical successes. For Michael Cera, these successes were the best sitcom of the last decade (and in the top ten of all time, if you ask me), Arrested Development, as well as the Oscar-winning hit teen pregnancy dramedy Juno and Seth Rogen’s teen-boy-comedy opus Superbad.

But these days, everywhere I look, it’s disdain for this GTA-raised former child star. He’s getting it from Jezebel, he’s getting it from ONTD (but that’s not surprising, since LiveJournal’s largest community is notoriously fickle).

I’ve been trying to figure out the roots for this hate (if it can be called hate, since I’m not sure Michael Cera is really the sort of personality that inspires that level of emotion), and I’m coming up at a bit of a loss. We can probably chalk it up to his relative ubiquity. He’s 21, Canadian, and has an IMDb acting filmography that is 43 items long.

I’m not usually over-occupied with Michael Cera. It’s just that tonight was one of those nights that my buddy Ian got me free passes to an advance screening, as he periodically does. The screening was of Michael Cera’s latest star turn, in the screen adaptation of Youth in Revolt, a novel which I have not read, nor had I even heard of it before this week.

One of the most frequent criticisms of Michael Cera is that he really only plays one character, and that character is very similar to himself. To that, I say, maybe and so what? There are plenty of actors who build successful, long-running careers doing this — from Anthony Michael Hall to Harrison Ford.

In the film version of Youth in Revolt, I’d argue that M. Cera manages to play two separate characters (within the same movie!), though the one who accompanied me to the movie argued that the characters he plays aren’t really that different. Those characters are the awkward teen boy named Nick Twisp (our hero) and his ultra-suave alter-ego/persona by the name of Francois, a persona he adopts in order to win the affections of Sheeni, a confident, intelligent and Francophile blonde teenage girl who lives with her ultra-conservative religious family in a very fancy trailer home.

Sure, throughout the movie realized that Sheeni is absolutely too good and too smart for Nick Twisp, and in the movie’s resolution hoped that she would tell him that. She doesn’t. My disappointment is not so great that I can’t enjoy the absurdist humour that forms the basis of the rest of the movie, though.

Back to Michael Cera. I suppose I do feel twinges of my own backlash against this guy; like Seth Rogen before him, Michael Cera’s maleness means he can be awkward, unconventional in appearance, and still be a movie star. It doesn’t work that way for girls, and I resent that.

I’m pretty sure I’d never want to hang out with Michael Cera. He’s probably a dick in real life. But it doesn’t really matter to me, because he’ll have to mess up pretty badly to override the immense goodwill I have toward him because of one thing. Well, one character:

George Michael Bluth. Awkward teenage comic perfection. I always loved George Michael because he was the only one of the Bluth family who consistently acted selflessly (even the erstwhile moral centre of the show, his father Michael, was as manipulative as the rest of his maligned and maladjusted family).

The point of all of this is that I can never jump on the Cera hate train. I just can’t. Every pratfall, every ill-timed hand gesture and stutter endeared him to me so that it’ll take more than oversaturation to get me off Cera. (What will be the limits of this goodwill? Hard to say. Actually, it’s not that hard. It happened with Seth Rogen and the horrible date rape joke in Observe and Report. I’m kind of off Seth Rogen now, and not even watching his 18-year-old adorability the series DVD of Undeclared over the holidays has been able to wash the taste of bitter, unfunny misogyny out of my mouth.)

CERA, RECOMMENDED:

Arrested Development - One of many, MANY brilliant shows Fox cancelled over the last decade. If you haven’t already, rent it in order on DVD. Die laughing. Revive. Repeat.

Paper Heart – Cera appears in this fictionalized documentary with comedienne/musician Charlyne Yi, and if you like sweet, nerdy romance, I think you’ll like this flick.

Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist – Not as highly recommended, but if you like movies about teenage misfits wandering the big city, go for it.