Personality Zone

Charlie Bartlett

This film pulls cliches from almost every high school/teen movie or TV show of the past four decades -- most transparently Harold & Maude, Rushmore, and Ferris Bueller's Day Off. No matter which of those favorites rises first to a viewer's mind, Charlie Bartlett suffers from the comparison. Artisan teenagers are most likely to appreciate the effort.

When we meet Charlie (Anton Yelchin), he is being expelled from the final one of a string of exclusive private boarding schools. After settling in at the "estate" he and his mother call home, he dons his prep school blazer and takes a yellow school bus to the local public school. When he returns home with a black eye after a predictable run-in with the school bully, he ends up on a psychiatrist's couch. The Ritalin he is prescribed makes him nuts, but it's just what the doctor ordered to put him onto the fast track to popularity at school. Charlie enlists the bully as his pharmacy retailer. Then he sets up a therapy office in the boys' bathroom. Kids tell him what ails them and he uses psychiatric journals and manuals in the library to package their symptoms into textbook cases and get drugs. The usual cinematic crises, from the sublime to the ridiculous, afflict the high school kids. A cheerleader with low self-esteem sleeps with most of the football team. A boy with few friends outside of his video games makes an unsuccessful suicide attempt. If the adults are any indication the future is bleak, too. Formerly a happy history teacher, Nathan Garnder (Robert Downey, Jr.) is now a divorced, alcoholic, incompetent principal. Charlie's youthful and attractive blond mother Marilyn (Hope Davis) washes down Klonopin with white wine between visits to her husband at the state prison. Charlie and his love interest Susan (Kat Dennings), who is the principal's daughter, come across as sadly jaded. For instance, Susan deflowers Charlie in a staged convertible she calls her "office" and merely giggles when he makes a public announcement that he's no longer a virgin.

Verdict: There are a few truly funny moments, but overall the content depresses, and the filmmakers seem unsure of whether they want to make light comedy or biting social satire.