Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. I was at this screening myself here in Austin and I'll have my review out shortly... however, Problem Pasture's opinion is really close to my own... I think I liked it just a tad bit more than he did, but it's not that far off.

Enjoy the review!

Hey gang.

Just got out of an early screening of Charlie Bartlett today and thought I might pipe in on my opinion of the flick. I really didn’t know how I would feel about this one –honestly, the only real attraction for me was going to be the not-often-enough instance of watching Robert Downey Jr. up on screen. But it was free courtesy of AICN so, needless to say, I went.

Pretty much from the get-go my opinion changed. Anton Yelchin seems to channel the same sort of equivalent charisma as an up-dated, edgier Ferris Bueller. Downey’s good, too, shining more depth onto his character than was probably considered necessary from the script. What could’ve been a drab, we’ve-seen-it-before stereotype of tired father/principal was instead someone you cheered for or felt cheated by, all at the same time. Sometimes I even thought maybe Downey’s character was Charlie Bartlett, just all grown up and without the happy ending. Kudos to Downey, by the way, for agreeing to star in a film examining the radical and mishandled distribution of prescription drugs after such a high publicized battle with substances of the same sort of field. Lastly, Kat Dannings (you know, that girl from ‘The 40-Year-Old Virgin’) should get her credit, too, where it’s due, pulling in some great work as someone who’s maybe not your traditional cookie cutter of young, blatantly attractive actresses.

My only criticism might be that, as it appeared this film seemed to try and pull off something that was wholly original, often times I was distracted by such things as how overly ‘badass’ high school can be (really, how many rockin’, un-adult supervised and stage-provided soirées did you attend?). Also, a couple of times the dialogue dipped into a vanilla, after-school special speech with a message including such gems as ‘I’ve lived long enough on this Earth to know that what you do in this life means something.’ It’s great the theme that this movie tried to push, it could’ve maybe just done it a little less obligated and a little more creatively.

Seeing that the first of this year has been mostly riddled with crap and the future shows little signs of intelligent life for a while now, Charlie Bartlett is by far a diamond in the rough this Valentine’s season.

Sincerely,
Problem Pasture