REVIEW: Charlie Bartlett

Cheer up Charlie Bartlett
Popping pills and teetering on the line between over-exposing ourselves for mass appreciation and crawling into ourselves to avoid mass humiliation seems to be the mantra of our drama-filled generation. Just ask the ladies from “The Hills.” Taking note of the trends that are rampant among the young kids today, Charlie Bartlett does a good job of making its supporting cast of misfits and popular kids quite relatable, giving them a common denominator in the King of all Misfits and the Misunderstood, the film’s namesake, played by young Russian actor Anton Yelchin (Alpha Dog).

It seems Charlie was groomed since childhood—saddled with a tax-evading, incarcerated father and a deluded, flighty mother—to constantly seek approval from his peers. While most teen characters resolve to bring down the Queen B, like in Mean Girls, or to be the sole source of alcohol—and, by association, fun—for an un-chaperoned party, like in Superbad, in order to get in with the in-crowd, Charlie decides to take the unconventional road. He propositions the school bully, played by a surprisingly believable Tyler Hilton ("One Tree Hill"), with a business partnership that involves selling psychiatric drugs to their peers for purposes of getting high as well as dealing with their burgeoning teen angst. He instantly becomes legendary. Unlike Mean Girls, however, the movie doesn’t wait till the end to prove that his peers really do care about him and they aren't just interested in his overflowing supply. The simple fact that he takes the time to listen to their problems and considers them all—in spite of their hierarchical cliques—equally important is reason enough to worship him indefinitely.

And what keeps the viewers worshiping at the altar of Yelchin is that he dares to go beyond the shy boy-next-door staple and isn’t afraid to put his inner freak on display. My personal favorite expositions would have to be his need to announce at a raging party—while rocking a blazer and boxers—that he was officially no longer a virgin and his rendition of "Yankee Doodle Dandy" in a British accent. It’s this behavior that makes me believe that he’s more fit to be Robert Downey Jr.’s son rather than his nemesis. Perhaps then Downey Jr. wouldn’t have seemed like a lifeless waste, who only got to shine during rare moments of inappropriate humor. Perhaps then Charlie’s daddy issues would’ve seemed more interesting and would have warranted his needy behavior. But instead Downey Jr. was subjected to playing Kat Dennings’ (40 Year Old Virgin) father and the principal of the high school, as well as a backboneless, emasculated, power-starved, alcoholic with a cheating ex-wife.

Maybe the writer, Gustin Nash, favored a more sugar-coated version of this boy’s obvious anguish, having been terminally aged by his lack of parental guidance and overly mature wardrobe. Instead of allowing him to wallow in self pity—as every teenager should—after revealing that he was abandoned by his father and left to baby sit his depressed mother, Nash overrides his heartfelt confession by having Dennings reward him for his honesty with sex in the backseat of a fake car. And even though he tried to “get real” again with an after-school-special suicide attempt by one of the students that would teach Charlie about consequences, he eventually just steam-rolled over that by pretending that the solution to the suicidal hermit’s problems was forcing everyone to watch his play, so that for once he would be heard.

Then the film tapers off into a quick wrap-up to assuage our interests as to what happened to all the main characters and a resounding moral-of-the-story moment that pretty much says that teens just need to be heard not medicated and if you want to be popular, all you have to do is listen to your fellow man—you hear that presidential hopefuls?

It seems Nash really does need to be heard though, since his next project is called Youth in Revolt and his latest loud speaker will be played by Michael Cera--most certainly the new voice of our stuttering, self-conscious, sex-crazed generation, and one that will be equally entertaining as Yelchin.