Charlie Bartlett

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.

Zodiac

I just saw Zodiac, out on DVD, a movie about a real-life serial killer, The Zodiac, who killed during the sixties and seventies in the San Francisco Bay area. Really though the movie is about a cartoonist who becomes obsessed by the case and later writes two books about it. Jake Gyllenhaal plays the cartoonist -- supporting characters of note are Mark Ruffalo as the beleaguered detective, and fellow newspaper man Robert Downey Jr. deliciously playing the role of the newspaper man gone nutty over case -- he's got some great lines in this movie. He actually becomes a completely destroyed alcoholic, which is interesting given Downey's problems with substance abuse. When I first started watching the movie I was giddy with excitement. I love movies set in a newspaper room, and I love movies where their is an intriguing problem for the actors to chew on. However, the movie kinda strays as it goes on and you start to wonder why the cartoonist is getting so obsessed, he even gets his kids in on solving the mystery of the killer's identity, but all in all Zodiac is worth watching even though it has a less than satisfying ending.