Hey everyone. Capone in Chicago here.
This small little film might be the one I've struggled over more than anything else I've seen so far this year. It's a modest work with bold intentions and some of the finest performances I've seen all year, but it's not the kind of movie that's particularly easy to love.
Admire? Without question. But not love. Above all else, the imperfect film serves as a calling card for the vastly talented young star Anton Yelchin, and if CHARLIE BARTLETT does little else in the grand scheme of cinema history, it will be remembered for the first memorable instance that Yelchin was allowed to show his range in such an impressive way.
I've been admiring Yelchin's work for many years, as the young man in Hearts of Atlantis opposite Anthony Hopkins, as Hank Azaria's son in "Huff" and as the sweet-hearted victim in ALPHA DOG. If I can throw in one more fantastic role, although the film wasn't that great, Yelchin worked wonders as Diane Lane's son in FIERCE PEOPLE a couple years back. And naturally I'm curious how he'll transform the role of Chekov in next year's Star Trek relaunch.
The other standout in CHARLIE BARTLETT should come as no surprise. Robert Downey Jr. has been putting forth great performances since... well, forever. And if they weren't great, they were at least memorable. Here he plays a high school principal that someone manages to garner the respect of absolutely no one in the student body.
His problem isn't that he's too strict or too out of touch with the young people; his problem is that often times he's too much like them. You could make an entire film about his character and still have material left over. You almost get the sense that his best days were in high school, and perhaps he thought when choosing careers that he could somehow recapture his fame or fun times by returning to high school as an administrator. Instead what he has is a daughter, Susan (Kat Dennings from THE 40-YEAR-OLD VIRGIN and a brief stint on "E.R." two years ago), no wife, and a growing drinking problem that at one point in the recent past involved waving a gun around while loaded (him and the gun).
The character of Charlie is fascinating. He comes from money. His loving but completely useless mother (a funny as hell Hope Davis) lets her son rule the roost while dad is in white-collar jail. He's gotten kicked out of most private schools for running some kind of illegal or unethical business not for the money but to get the other kids to like him. He has a psychiatrist on retention who seems all-too willing to whip out the old prescription pad out and scribble out a variety of behavioral drugs for Charlie.
After being the victim of an unprovoked beating on his first day of public school, Charlie quickly comes up with his latest scheme: convince his doctors that he's in need of many different prescription drugs. He collects the drugs and sells them to his fellow students, but only after he has impromptu therapy session with them in the men's room to determine what drugs they need to cope with their mental ailments. Naturally Charlie falls hard for Susan long before he finds out their connection.
Within a single scene, Yelchin can ooze gentlemanly charm and quickly convert to obnoxious prankster or serious mental case. All those years of practice apparently paid off. With his feature debut, director Jon Poll has a lot of fun with the Charlie character, especially in his tense conversations with Downey. These two are cut from the same cloth, but neither will admit it. Both are painfully lonely men, and both are hoping that a solid relationship with Susan will help change that.
The problems with Charlie Bartlett have mostly to do with Gustin Nash's uneven script--which paints the lead character as something of a folk hero to the students when, in fact, the kid may be seriously suffering from mental illness--never really let me in the way I wanted it to. And while that may be by design, I don't think so. CHARLIE BARTLETT is the kind of movie that needs its audience on its side, and I think the filmmakers believe that they have made something accessible to most audiences. It didn't feel that way to me. If I felt empathy for a character, it was because the individual performances were so strong that I didn't have a choice.
There also are some vague messages about being yourself, defying authority, suicide, and adult misbehavior that fall varying degrees of flat, and that's too bad, because it's the only thing that kept this movie from being great. Despite its cool exterior, CHARLIE BARTLETT is exceedingly watchable and more often than not, exceedingly entertaining, even as it sabotages itself even when it's succeeding. All Downey completists should not miss this film; and those contemplating becoming Yelchin scholars, mark this film as his major transition film into the spotlight.
If nothing else, this movie is extremely memorable.
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