Charlie Bartlett

If one might criticize Juno for having dialog that is not reflective of the way teenagers speak, then Charlie Bartlett can be criticized for not having dialog that reflects how teenagers speak and in addition the people involved don't seem to know anything about how teenagers act, socialize or do anything else. The film doesn't seem to reflect any reality of high school at all. Now granted I haven't been in high school for a while but it has been less than a decade and I find it hard to believe that things have changed so much that I couldn't even recognize the general thematic elements.

Charlie (Anton Yelchin) has just been kicked out of private school and his mother (Hope Davis) has decided to send him to public school. There Charlie faces the problems of popularity, being beaten up by the school bully and his attraction to a girl in the school. And it doesn't treat one of these situations with anything resembling a reality. The school bully apparently just wants to be liked and pines after the popular cheerleader. The object of affection girl is edgy and goes her own way. Basically any high school movie cliche you can think of you get represented here.

And if all the movie wanted to be was an imaginary take on high schools along the lines of Ferris Bueller's Day Off or something I guess I could have respected it a little. Even Yelchin's deliver seems entirely beholden to Matthew Broderick. But this movie wants to tackle bigger issue such as teenage medication like Ritalin, suicide, alcoholism and right to privacy. And in the end it just feels like a slightly better budgeted after school special.

Beyond the smattering of boring teenage talent that inhabits this movie, there are two decent actors who have been caught up in the train wreck. Robert Downey, Jr. plays the father of one of the students and is the principal of the school who is an alcoholic (but never at school (apparently making it okay)) and who has apparently at one time or another brandished a gun with his young daughter in the room. Not only is the character uninteresting and played fairly blandly by Downey,Jr. the way it treats his problems so weakly and without conviction is really unsettling.

Hope Davis as Charlie's mom is slightly better off. She clearly seems to have some self medicating issues of her own (there were very few scenes she didn't have a glass of wine in hand). Still her laissez faire attitude to raising Charlie has left him confused but she delivers some spot on funny lines in the early scenes. So in general she is about the only bright spot in the entire film. And yet even she can't save the final act which is generally insulting and poorly plotted. In the end I can't even be sure what the message of this film was supposed to be (but I suspect there was supposed to be one).