Charlie Bartlett (2008)

I love this movie so much

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

There are so many kids out there trying to make the world a better place, trying to save people and do everything in their power to just give everyone a voice. It's important that these wonderful teenagers are reminded that they are just kids, they shouldn't have to be therapists and they shouldn't have the responsibility for someone's life and I think this movie tells that story really well.Gustin Nash has written a heartfelt story and shows a knack for one liners, but Jon Poll's film technique falls a little short as the images to the words doesn't add to them enough.It's a great film and I recommend watching it when you're feeling nostalgic or you need a cheering up, but this is not a go to film for when you want to experience a slap of pure cinema.

What exactly is this film's point of view on prescription drugs? We have a kid selling his personal prescription's pills, (much too casually prescribed ), to schoolmates. After talking with the kids about their problems, he fakes their symptoms to his doctors to get an array of other drugs to sell. His shrinks are so willing to drug him up, that they immediately take his word on each and every problem he describes to them. Is this an indictment of the psychiatric profession's lack of any empathetic interaction with patients? Their zealous promotion of dangerous mood-altering drugs? It certainly could have been, and rightfully so, but no: When Robert Downey's "wise" character sincerely and authoritatively chimes in on the subject, it turns out that these drugs are fine, as long as they're prescribed by trained professionals. Wait one minute: They WERE prescribed by trained professionals!, with less depth of investigation than the kid did with his customers. So instead of ending with a valuable insight into some very real problems that we face, the film disregards the details of it's own story-line, and creates conclusions out of the blue. It's irresponsible, false, and harmful.

Hal Ashby directed "Harold and Maude" in 1971, a little masterpiece about a depressed teenager called Harold. Disillusioned with the world (religion, nationalism, work, wealth, consumerism, capitalism, the military, school, family etc), Harold resorts to suicidal flights of fancy. He's rehabilitated when he meets Maude, an elderly Holocaust survivor.Directed by Jon Poll, and based on a screenplay by Gustin Nash, "Charlie Bartlett" references "Harold and Maude" several times. Like Ashby's film, it also revolves around a depressed teenager with a wealthy but absent father. In this case his name is Charlie (Anton Yelchin), a mopey teen who moves into a new high-school. Here he meets hundreds of kids who, like him, struggle to cope with various pressures and problems. Charlie helps them all by starting a psychiatrist's booth in a school bathroom.Screenwriter Gustin Nash's father is a psychiatrist. Nash's script, though, uses psychiatry to make a larger point: a damaged generation of adults have abandoned a damaged generation of kids. In "Charlie Bartlett", these kids metaphorically become their own therapists at best, at worst their own self-medicators. Adults remain on the sidelines, watching as kids run damage control."Madness is not a natural, but a political, category," philosopher Mark Fisher once wrote, "what is needed now is a politicization of much more common disorders." Whilst "Charlie Bartlett" is honest about teenage despair, suicide, addiction, authoritarianism, and the way in which society increasingly medicates for maladies, it doesn't really touch upon the roots of such things. Where better teen comedies ("Ghost World", "Pump Up the Volume", "Harold and Muade") delve into the systemic, psycho-socio-economic causes of these problems, "Charlie Bartlett" recoils. Teenage despair, here, is simply a result of being misunderstood and/or unpopular."Charlie Bartlett" stars Anton Yelchin in the titular role. Unconventionally cool, his performance evokes the teen comedies of the 1980s ("Ferris Bueller's Day Off", "Say Anything", "The Sure Thing" etc). Hope Davis plays Charlie's mother, a woman who, like all the adults in Nash's script, hides behind addictions whilst her son is called upon to "be an adult" and so "handle" things which no kid should have to. Elsewhere Tyler Hilton plays a school bully, his role subtly referencing 1979's "Over the Edge", another flick about abandoned teens. The film co-stars Robert Downey Junior - himself once an alcoholic - as an alcoholic school principal. A sultry Kat Dennings plays Bartlett's love interest.8/10 – See "Ghost World", "Pump Up The Volume", "The Spectacular Now", "The Perks of Being a Wallflower", "The King of Pigs", Godard's "Le Chinoise" and Bresson's "The Devil Probably".

Charlie Bartlett is this generation's Ferris Bueller's Day Off. It's a sweet, uplifting coming-of-age film that had some social messages and can very well be a true story at most high schools. Granted, this is not the best teen film, but for what it is, it's good and often compelling despite the story skipping around a lot.Jon Poll's film is about a rich guy who has been expelled from every private school so he is enrolled in a public school. Being unpopular at first, he changes that once he becomes the unofficial psychiatrist in the bathroom stall administering drugs. There he receives the negative attention of Principal Gardner and the positive attention of his daughter, Susan.The acting is pretty good. Anton Yelchin delivers a solid performance as Charlie and is pretty convincing. However, the show belongs to Downey Jr. This is his last film before his complete comeback with Iron Man, but he is excellent as the alcoholic Principal Gardner.Overall, this is not the perfect teen film, but it manages to deliver a touching story that will ring true to many high school/college kids out there. It's smartly written and has some fine dialog. The story sometimes skips over the place, but if you can catch up it's no big deal. I rate this film 9/10.