Will actor Michael Cera ever graduate from high school?
I’m getting worried about Michael Cera.
For the past six or so years, the young actor with the puppy-dog eyes and nervous laugh has been locked in perpetual adolescence.
He routinely plays high schoolers plagued by shyness and self-doubt. His movies revolve around time-honored rites of passage, such as losing one’s virginity or attending one’s first kegger.
Cera was 15 when he joined the uniformly brilliant cast of “Arrested Development.” A pudgy, perpetually puzzled kid, he was the perfect choice to play George-Michael, the painfully nerdy son of put-upon patriarch Michael Bluth (Jason Bateman) .
Cera, now 21, has gone on to play the same nebbish man-child — ad naseum — in “Superbad,” “Juno,” “Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist” and “Year One.”
His character in the mock documentary “Paper Heart” — meant to be a fictionalized version of Cera — follows the same familiar pattern. He fidgets. He fumbles. He whines. He pines.
Now Cera has been cast as an awkward teen once again in “Youth In Revolt” — based on the novel by C.D. Payne.
Cera stars as Nick Twisp, a cynical, sex-obsessed lad whose trailer trash parents (Steve Buscemi and Jean Smart) are teetering on the edge of divorce.
As his home life grows rockier, Nick sets his sights on dream girl Sheeni Saunders (Portia Doubleday).
At first, Nick struggles to connect with the blond babe. So he creates an alter-ego, a nonchalant bad boy who smokes, seduces women and commits random acts of terrorism.
It’s Cera like you’ve never seen him before — cool, confident and surprisingly sexual, despite that anemic caterpillar masquerading as a mustache on his upper lip. He even, dare I say it, struts.
Could hope be on the horizon?
It’s hard to say, given Cera’s next projects: a comic-book adaption and an “Arrested Development” movie.
In “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World,” based on the graphic novel series by Bryan Lee O’Malley and directed by Edgar Wright (“Shaun of the Dead”), Cera plays a 23-year-old rock musician who must battle his new girlfriend’s seven evil exes.
Again, the actor finds himself on the awkward cusp of adolescence and manhood.
Sure, he’s finally out of his onscreen teens. But does “Scott Pilgrim” have what it takes to make Michael Cera cool?
Unlike Michael Angarano (“Gentleman Broncos”) and Jesse Eisenberg (“Adventureland”), who have inherited his man-child mantle, Cera seems to lack a certain amount of confidence and charisma.
He needs to leave behind all the nervous, nerdy trappings of teenhood. He needs, desperately, to grow up.
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“Youth in Revolt” opens in theaters Oct. 30.
You’ll have to wait ’til 2010 for “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World” and the film version of “Arrested Development.”
She Likes to Watch 
Word on the street is Cera will be cast as the lead in the remake of Dirty Harry.
The name of the street?
Frivolously Facetious Avenue.