Film

Charlie Bartlett (2007)

Director: Jon Poll

Movie review

From Time Out London

Turfed out of a prestigious fee-paying establishment for selling fake IDs, troubled teen Charlie Bartlett (Anton Yelchin) rolls up to a suburban high school in a posh blazer and promptly gets a kicking. Finding a new role as the establishment’s purveyor of prescription anti-depressants and psychiatric counsel, he’s soon on the road to acceptance, though his rocky relationship with the stressed, drink-addled principal (Robert Downey Jr) may not be helped by the fact he’s dating the latter’s Goth-ish daughter (Kit Dennings).

With its smart-aleck protagonist and adolescent-rebellion theme, this slightly smug offering conjures up comparisons with ‘Ferris Bueller’ and ‘Rushmore’ which it can’t sustain. Its strained effort to cover lots of character bases (absent faather, blithely distant mum Hope Davis) actually serves to dissipate rather than concentrate matters. This is on the pleasant side of underwhelming, nonetheless, and master Yelchin does well by a character who should be perfectly throttlable.

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