When Adventureland opened, some critics and bloggers commented on how Eisenberg was “the new Michael Cera“, who played the not dissimilar sensitive guy character in Mottola’s previous film, Superbad. Such comments, however, are kinda reductive and kinda insulting to both these actors. They’re not the first actors play the senstive guy and they won’t be the last. Jason Biggs got a bit stuck playing senstive, virginal guys in and after the American Pie movies, for starters, and maybe one could trace the archetype back to Ben Braddock.

That said, it certainly seems easy to get typecast if your look and acting style hit certain notes, and these two do have a similar screen presence, even right down to interchangeable occasional semi-jewfros. Cera played the senstive nice guy in Juno, and then again in Nick And Nora’s Infinite Playlist – an East Coast, high school graduate, lessons-in-life romantic comedy that’s actually closely comparable to Adventureland.

Both Cera and Eisenberg do seem to have been essaying the same skinny senstive chap a lot, and vying for similar roles, but the latter is in no way the “new” former. He’s American and five years older for starters (born 83, compared to 88), and made his feature film breakthrough in 2002′s Roger Dodger. The Canadian Cera, meanwhile, appeared on ‘Arrested Development’ on TV from 2003 to 2006 and made his movie breakthrough with Superbad. I’ve not seen Zombieland yet, but a friend says Eisenberg is still stuck in the sensitive guy role, even if he’s stepping outside the romantic comedy framework to instead fight zombies.

Talking of fighting, Cera gets his chance to break the typecasting with Scott Pilgrim Vs the World, his current project. This movie is based on a series of superb, off-beat comics by Canadian writer-artist Bryan Lee O’Malley. I’m seriously hoping that Edgar Wright, the co-creator of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz not only manages to make the leap to North America, working on a movie without his regular collaborators (Simon Pegg, Nick Frost – who are instead working with the aforementioned Mottola on geeks-on-a-road-trip-meet-an-alien movie Paul), but also manages to translate Scott Pilgrim to the screen. Scott is an unusual character – he most certainly is not a stock sensitive guy. In fact, he’s kinda insensitive – he’s a law unto himself, oblivious to many social niceties, but irresistible to woman, somehow, and totally cool with a stream of girls. He’s not the sensitive virginal guy holding off for the right girl. Though in the book, he meets the right girl, and has to win her over by fighting  her “seven evil exes”. Wright has real challenge to understand this unusual character and bring him to the screen – especially if he’s got the baggage of all Cera’s sensitive guy previous roles.

With them both having played so many similar roles, but now both progressing by actually having to fight stuff, it does beg the question: who’d win in a fight between Eisenberg and Cera. Maybe someone needs to write a movie with two sensitive nice guys vying for the same girl who have to resolve their differences by manning up, and having a scrap. A proper scrap mind, no girly hair-pulling or pinching.