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Welcome to How to Spend $20, BOP’s look at the latest Blu-ray discs and DVDs to hit stores nationwide. This week: Cops pursue Michael Cera, Family Guy invades the world of Root Chicken and Denzel Washington totes a gun.

Pick of the Week

For people who knew Michael Cera always had a bad side: Youth in Revolt

Let’s hear it for Michael Cera, everybody! In Youth in Revolt, just half of his screen time is devoted to playing that all-too-familiar George Michael Bluth character. In the other half, he plays a more spontaneous alter ego with blue eyes, a mustache, a deeper voice and a sexy-ish name: François Dillinger.

In Youth in Revolt, based on the first three books in C.D. Payne’s six-part epistolary novel, Cera (now 22) plays a 16-year-old outcast, Nick Twisp, who falls for a smart and beautiful girl named Sheeni Saunders (Portia Doubleday). When Nick realizes they’ll probably have to split up when his family moves away, Nick adopts a more dangerous persona to keep Sheeni at bay. The shit hits the fan, however, when his alter ego makes him a wanted criminal.

Youth in Revolt, actually, is a regrettably overlooked movie released by the Weinstein Company in January. It’s got a quick wit and is peppered with creative influences that keep the movie visually interesting (that claymation sequence in the car) and a lot of fun. Made for $18 million, Youth in Revolt earned just $15.2 million in the U.S.





The movie is supported by a cast of colorful secondaries – Zach Galifianakis in particular. Other actors include Jean Smart, Ray Liotta, Steve Buscemi, Fred Willard and Justin Long, who, ever since He’s Just Not That Into You, is contractually required to appear in every big studio release.

Disc includes: Deleted scenes, deleted and extended animated sequences, Audition Footage featurette, audio commentary

For people who think it’s a wonderful day for pie: Family Guy: Volume 8

Fox continues its strange and confusing release of the Family Guy series on DVD with this volume eight disc. On it is the final seven episodes of the seventh season and first eight episodes of the eighth season, which wrapped on May 23rd with a one-hour Star Wars parody called Something, Something, Something, Dark Side.

Perhaps what gets included on each volume would make more sense if Family Guy seasons operated on a schedule not unlike Comedy Central’s South Park, where half of the season airs in the spring, the other in the fall. But this doesn’t happen. Instead, Family Guy seasons run on a traditional broadcast TV schedule. Consider me confused.

I’m not a religious Family Guy watcher, but I did see a good number of the episodes on the volume eight disc. Standouts for me would be 420, which aired a day before the recognized stoner holiday, and Road to the Multiverse, which opened the eighth season in late September.

420 is notable for its fantastic song and dance number, which Stewie launches into to teach Brian, who is arrested for marijuana possession, the evils of bud. Joined by the citizens of Quahog, the tune emphasizes how all’s “we need is a bag of weed to keep us worry free!”

As for Road to the Multiverse, Stewie and Brian happen upon an otherworldly remote control that allows the duo to travel through a series of alternate realities. They end up on a world where humans obey dogs, but prior to that they live like The Flintstones, enter the world of Robot Chicken and experience what it’s like to live inside an animated Walt Disney movie. You can watch the clip here.

Disc includes: Audio commentary, deleted scenes, The Road to Road to the Multiverse featurette, Family Guy Karaoke

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