Charlie Bartlett is a cute, fun teen movie about a rich prep school kid who becomes the bathroom "psychiatrist" at a public school. One draw for me was that one of my favorite actors, Robert Downey Jr. is in the movie, and I had heard and read good reviews. So I had high hopes for this movie but left feeling a little disappointed. While the movie is reminiscent of other hip teenage angst movies like Harold and Maude or Rushmore (a few Cat Stevens songs, a quirky older guy/gal who acts as mentor, clueless and out-of touch parents, and at least two of these movies end with a student written play) Charlie Bartlett doesn’t quite reach those heights. It suffers from trying too hard, I think. There are some sweet moments and Anton Yelchin who plays Charlie is charming, but the script falters and the tone wavers from silly to ironic to melodramatic.
And I get a little tired of movies with the uber-teens: the youngsters, who behave as adults, seem to have no parental supervision and can do things like arrange rock concerts with 500 people in their back yard or wear designer clothes each day to school. Uber-teens don’t exist in reality but are rife in movies and television.
This is another one of those movies that has a lot of potential and some really good moments but goes astray.
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4 comments:
I agree completely with you. And I saw this movie in the theaters which I think can sometimes up the likeness factor of the movie a few notches.
I do like the girl who played Charlie's love interest. She's in Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist, which I think you might like better than this movie. Michael Cera (the kid from Juno and Superbad) is in that one too.
Nick and Nora's infinite playlist is on my my queue -- I heard it was good. Didn't you think the actress (Nora) had really weird red lipstick in this movie?
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