My Life, Made Possible By Pop Culture

As a smart and creative kid from a troubled family, Anton Yelchin’s role as the title character in Charlie Bartlett can’t help but recall his in last year’s quirky comedy Running With Scissors.  Yelchin wears the same earnest grin and puppy dog wide eyes to play the harmless, innocent little boy who holds the true value of his intelligence and therefore his threatening nature as a deep secret.  The depth of his performance offers a duality to Charlie: is he just a precocious kid or a devious schemer with much greater plans, managing to dupe us all?  Charlie Bartlett plays with the idea of perception versus reality in an increasingly paranoid society, and unfortunately the result is just as muddied and messy as a “brain on drugs,” for lack of better terminology.

In a quest for friendship and acceptance at his new high school, Charlie uses his cunning to convince doctors to right prescriptions for psychiatric drugs that he then sells to his classmates.  An innate entrepreneur, Charlie is able to hone his skills due to his dippy and indulgent mother (Hope Davis)’s quest to just be the boy’s friend.  She shelters him with limos and private schools and “the estate” but keeps her emotional distance, undoubtedly hurt by his father’s past actions and afraid to get too close to another of the gender, even if he is her own son.  The only other parental figure in the film is the school’s principal (Robert Downey Jr.) and father of Charlie’s crush (Kat Demmings).  As an alcoholic-workaholic, he is the stereotypical overprotective father, checking up on the boy he sees as a threat to his daughter’s purity without considering her role in the relationship.  It’s a sobering look at Downey Jr., who is hardened and jaded in the way he always is, but in playing a father and a role model, it just takes him to another level.

Director Jon Poll picked an incomparable cast, but without them, Charlie Bartlett would never have gotten a wide release.  Its look at the effects and use of prescription medication is hardly revolutionary; there is no strong message for or against the way they are handed out like candy in society or even in this film.  Events take place one after the other in a surreally heightened timeline, stripping the story of its believability and truth.  The same is said for the conclusions characters draw and the consequences (or lack thereof) they suffer for their actions; there are ups and downs within every ten minutes, making it feel like the film itself should be on some sort of mood stabilizer.  Perhaps these were conscious choices on Poll’s part, but with the manic feel of Charlie Bartlett in tone, material, and editing, it’s doubtful.  Poll just tries to do too much, and unfortunately his actors get swallowed up in it all.

Charlie Bartlett on DVD offers three blasé commentary tracks from Poll, which is just as narcissistic as Charlie himself, opening the film by standing on a stage, listening to hundreds of his peers chant his name.  Considering Poll just seems to have gotten lucky with some of his choices and on the whole seemed to be flying by the seat of his pants with “this whole directing thing,” one commentary can be considered stretching his knowledge and insight, but three is just downright ridiculous.  They could have easily been condensed into one, and the result still would have been underwhelming.  If anything, it would have been nice to hear from the film’s saving graces instead of behind-the-scenes players whose approaches were questionable.

“The Restroom Confessional” is a clip that, at two minutes, can’t really be called a featurette, featuring the cast and crew of Charlie Bartlett sitting in Charlie’s infamous “office,” venting their frustrations.  It’s cute but forgettable and would only add something to the disc if it were funnier.

Everyone in Charlie’s world is fit for psychiatric evaluation, and the writing delivers them in a flat, obvious, expositional way, that distracts from the rich and detailed individual performances.  Charlie Bartlett preaches a message from an adolescent boy’s mouth, and unfortunately it just makes Poll and his film seem that much more sophomoric.  As a child who just wants to be liked and who is trying to hard to be a man, he is an odd choice to be “the professional,” but he, and the film in general, is desperate to prove that sometimes all one needs to initiate change is a genuinely sympathetic ear.

Trackback URI | Comments RSS