NOTE: This is an updated version of my earlier review from the Sundance Film Festival.
It's been a couple of years since Michael Cera last led a feature film, and maybe it's due to the visible way in which Scott Pilgrim vs. The World failed, but he's since been toiling away at smaller projects. Maybe it's for the best, as Cera's nice guy routine had quickly begun to wear thin, and taking on a few Indies has given him the opportunity to show a bit more edge. That's certainly the case in Crystal Fairy, a psychedelic road trip "comedy" where Cera plays maybe his most despicable character yet.

At the center of it all is Cera's crude and utterly unlikable performance as Jamie, a drug-obsessed douchebag staying in Chile and doing copious amounts of illegal substances. He's hooked up with three brothers (all played by Silva's real brothers) who seem to barely tolerate him, only indulging his desire to seek out new drugs to try. After doing tons of Chilean cocaine at a party, Jamie makes fun of a girl named Crystal Fairy (Gaby Hoffmann), a wild-haired, uni-browed free spirit accurately described as a "lonely tornado". Despite Jamie treating her like dirt, she's nice to him, and in his drug haze invites her along on a road trip to find the legendary San Pedro cactus.


It's unclear if Silva was aiming for this to be funnier, but it doesn't achieve much in that regard. Cera shines a couple of times, mostly through physical comedy as he's enduring the hallucinogenic effects of the cactus. It's much more effective once they hit their beachside destination for a camp out, where secrets are revealed and emotions lay bare. It's then that you realize that for all of the plot's meandering, these characters were slowly but surely becoming the oddest little family of all. It's to Silva's credit that he takes such a subtle approach, but he finds something tender and charming in the end. The conclusion's something of a head scratcher that will probably have many questioning everything they just watched. That's probably exactly what Silva wants you to do. Just because Crystal Fairy wanders, that doesn't mean it's lost.