{"id":550,"date":"2008-02-23T21:05:23","date_gmt":"2008-02-24T01:05:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/?p=550"},"modified":"2009-09-12T21:06:17","modified_gmt":"2009-09-13T01:06:17","slug":"charlie-bartlett-2007-movie-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/?p=550","title":{"rendered":"Charlie Bartlett (2007) – Movie Review"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Hope

Hope Davis is Anton Yelchin's MILF in "Charlie Bartlett"<\/p><\/div>\n

Charlie Bartlett\u2019s Day Off His Meds<\/em><\/span><\/h1>\n

[xrr rating= 2.5\/5]<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Charlie Bartlett<\/strong><\/em>. Starring Anton Yelchin, Robert Downey, Jr., Hope Davis, Kat Dennings, Tyler Hilton, Mark Rendall, Dylan Taylor, Megan Park, Jake Epstein, Jonathan Malen, Derek McGrath, Stephen Young, Ishan Dav\u00e9, David Brown, and Eric Fink. Music by Christophe Beck. Cinematography by Paul Sarossy.\u00a0 Production design by Tamara Deverell. Costume design by Luis Sequeira. Edited by Alan Baumgarten, A.C.E. Screenplay by Gustin Nash. Directed by Jon Poll. (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer\/Sidney Kimmel Entertainment, 2007, color, 97 minutes. MPAA Rating: R.)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Charlie Bartlett<\/em>, Gustin Nash\u2019s writing and Jon Poll\u2019s directorial debuts, respectively, is a cause for celebration\u2014for environmentalists, at least. That\u2019s because it recycles every clich\u00e9 about teen angst and acceptance that seemed so fresh a quarter century ago when John Hughes defined the genre with such gems as The Breakfast Club<\/em> and Ferris Bueller\u2019s Day Off.<\/em> In year 2008, however, there\u2019s not much left to compost in this mostly trite, but sometimes endearing comedy.<\/p>\n

Even the movie\u2019s title protagonist, brilliantly played by Anton Yelchin, is a complete retread of Wes Anderson\u2019s eccentric preppy wunderkind<\/em> Max Fischer from the charming 1998 classic Rushmore. <\/em>Like Max, Charlie is an underachieving overachiever with a knack for getting in trouble at his exclusive Connecticut prep school. His latest scam is forging and selling driver\u2019s licenses to his fellow classmates. His cheerfully vacant mother, played by the chameleon-like Hope Davis, lets the dean\u2019s recommendation of expulsion roll right off her back with a flippant \u201cI think this is a good time for an endowment,\u201d while opening her checkbook.<\/p>\n

Maybe the comely matriarch should have opened something else instead, because poor Charlie gets the boot anyways. On the ride home in their Mercedes stretch limo, though, Charlie and his mom discuss enrolling the aimless youngster in public school. She\u2019s only mildly concerned with her son\u2019s insubordinate behavior. Even though he doesn\u2019t need the money from his clandestine ventures, Charlie pushes the envelope because of an overriding desire for popularity. Not just to fit in, but to be loved. By everyone<\/em>.<\/p>\n

On the first day of public high school, Charlie takes the bus because he doesn\u2019t want to stand out, but he\u2019s so oblivious that he wears his navy blue prep school jacket (again, just like Max Fischer) and chinos to school. He also boards the wrong bus, the one special ed kids ride. To his utter amazement, when he arrives on campus, he is utterly ignored, save by a retarded boy whom he befriends on the bus.<\/p>\n

One bullyboy, Murphey (Tyler Hilton), who affects a 1977 Johnny Rotten pose, does<\/em> take an interest in Charlie, predictably slamming his head down the commode in the boy\u2019s restroom. This leads to a lot of expensive psychotherapy for Charlie, and thus the meat of what constitutes the movie\u2019s plot.<\/p>\n

After a manic episode resulting from a dose of Ritalin, Charlie gets an epiphany. He cons all manner of psychotropic drugs out of a coterie of shrinks, and fences the pills to the student body through Murphey, with whom he\u2019s since reconciled. Although the script takes a stab at satirical commentary in showing how easy it is for Charlie to score pills from his docs, it becomes incredibly non-judgmental about his pushing.<\/p>\n

In this crucial sense, Charlie Bartlett<\/em> is a Rorschach blotter of society\u2019s general attitude of having no expectations and demanding no accountability from its youth. The script gives Charlie a lot of latitude, as he \u201csolves\u201d the general malaise of the school\u2019s teen population. Students, both male and female, line the school corridor waiting for their \u201cappointments\u201d with Charlie, who gives them the pills they need to deal with the horrors of growing up young and middle class in a tony Connecticut suburb. Hey, Charlie\u2019s even such a swell guy that he dispenses little pearls of amateur psychoanalysis, as he does the Lucy Van Pelt bit across the bathroom stall.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know whether the filmmakers were attempting to be ironic in making this purposeless kid into a father confessor savior figure, but Charlie soon achieves the \u201crock star\u201d status among the student body he so longs for. He even scores the girl of his dreams, Susan (Kat Dennings), who\u2019s quite hot in a kittenish, pale Goth way. At this point, I\u2019m expecting Charlie to get his comeuppance. And it seems he is about to, because Susan\u2019s dad is the school principal.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, Principal Gardner (Robert Downey, Jr.) is about as impotent an authority figure as you\u2019ll ever meet. A bitter, divorced alcoholic who hates his life, Gardner futilely lets the inmates run the asylum, and then is shocked (shocked!) to find that anarchy reigns within his realm.<\/p>\n

But, even when a loner student (Mark Rendall) attempts suicide, overdosing on the pills Charlie sold him, we learn that nothing\u2019s really shocking after all, these days. Gardner sternly gives Charlie a lecture about the limits of popularity that sounds like one of Hugh Beaumont\u2019s blandly sensible homilies from \u201cLeave It to Beaver.\u201d<\/p>\n

All throughout this trite, but dark, affair, we never get a glimpse of how<\/em> dark Charlie\u2019s actions truly are. Even as Charlie\u2019s reckless behavior reaches its nadir, he\u2019s depicted more-or-less as a do-gooder who just goes overboard with his altruistic drug dealing. Sort of like Amelie<\/em>, but gone just a wee bit awry. Charlie Bartlett<\/em>\u2019s attempts at social satire are as futile as Principal Gardner\u2019s flaccid leadership. It\u2019s hard to have biting social commentary when a movie\u2019s as toothless as this one.<\/p>\n

John Hughes\u2019s movies from the 1980s worked so well at portraying teen alienation because he wrote them from the point-of-view of the \u201csquare peg\u201d nonconformist trying to fit in with the rest of the kids. But, one thing I caught on to in Charlie Bartlett<\/em>\u2019s depiction of today\u2019s high school students: Not only do the school\u2019s oddballs gravitate towards Charlie, but so does everyone else.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s because it seems the entire student population is one massive collection of \u201cout group\u201d misfits. Even stranger, the teen subgroups are a collection of readily definable rebels from bygone years: Hippies who seem decades too late to the party, as do the 1970s and 80s punks and the Goth kids straight out of the crowd from the Marilyn Manson 1996 \u201cAntichrist Superstar\u201d World Tour. You would\u2019ve thought they\u2019d show kids rebelling against their teachers and administration by hitting the books, but that would probably have been over the filmmakers\u2019 heads. Apparently, when there\u2019s nothing left to rebel against, rebellion becomes just another retro fashion statement.<\/p>\n

Charlie Bartlett<\/em> showcases the biggest waste of talent since A Prairie Home Companion. <\/em>Anton Yelchin is a promising talent, and not just in acting\u2014he really makes the ivories smoke when he plays Be Bop while jazzed up on Ritalin. Hope Davis makes the most of her dimwitted character by lending her a touching sweetness. Robert Downey, Jr. outshines the rest of the cast with another virtuoso performance. He really stretches here, having an almost intuitive, Method, feel for playing a harried substance abuser. I\u2019m being facetious, of course.<\/p>\n

But what I\u2019d really love to see is Downey, and Charlie Bartlett, after<\/em> they get out of rehab. Perhaps that\u2019s too much to expect in today\u2019s sugarcoated slide into nihilism<\/p>\n

Robert L. Jones is a photojournalist living and working in Minnesota. His work has appeared in <\/span>Black & White Magazine<\/span><\/span>, <\/span>Entrepreneur<\/span><\/span>, <\/span>Hoy! New York<\/span><\/span>, the New York<\/span>Post<\/span><\/span>, <\/span><\/em>RCA Victor <\/span>(Japan)<\/span><\/em>, <\/span>Scene in San Antonio<\/span><\/span>, <\/span>Spirit Magazine<\/span><\/span> (Canada), <\/span>Top Producer<\/span><\/span>,\u00a0 and the Trenton <\/span>Times<\/span><\/span>. Mr. Jones is a past entertainment editor of <\/span>The New Individualist<\/span><\/span>.<\/span><\/em><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Charlie Bartlett\u2019s Day Off His Meds [xrr rating= 2.5\/5] Charlie Bartlett. Starring Anton Yelchin, Robert Downey, Jr., Hope Davis, Kat Dennings, Tyler Hilton, Mark Rendall, Dylan Taylor, Megan Park, Jake Epstein, Jonathan Malen, Derek McGrath, Stephen Young, Ishan Dav\u00e9, David Brown, and Eric Fink. Music by Christophe Beck. Cinematography by Paul Sarossy.\u00a0 Production design by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38,79,37,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comedies","category-coming-of-age-movies","category-independent-films","category-mreview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=550"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":555,"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550\/revisions\/555"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}