Charlie Bartlett is a precocious and enterprising prep school reject who will do just about anything it takes to be popular. This includes sitting in the stall of the boys' restroom at the public school he now attends, dispensing medical and psychiatric advice - along with an assortment of prescription drugs he's wrangled out of his therapist - to an appreciative (and appreciatively doped-up) student body. The real trouble begins when Charlie eventually comes under the radar of the school's paranoid (but actually kind of cool) principal, both for his illegal activities in the john and for the romantic interest he's taken in the man's own daughter, who also happens to be a student at the school.
Written by Gustin Nash and directed by Jon Poll, "Charlie Bartlett" is a cut above the average teen comedy thanks to generally sophisticated writing, winning performances by Anton Yelchin, Robert Downey, Jr., Hope Davis and Kat Dennings and the satirical swipe it takes at a culture that subscribes to the notion that a pharmaceutical a day will keep the blues away. The movie also comes replete with a couple of nice, comfy moral lessons to make us all feel better about ourselves in the end - namely, that we shouldn't compromise our integrity to achieve popularity, and that we need to learn to channel our creativity in a more "positive" direction if we hope to make anything of ourselves in this life.
In short, "Charlie Bartlett" is a "daring" comedy that doesn't really dare very much when all is said and done. Yet, while the movie does lose much of its edge in the second half - succumbing to too many "feel good" comedy clichés and only-in-the-movies moments - it still manages to leave us smiling in the end.
Written by Gustin Nash and directed by Jon Poll, "Charlie Bartlett" is a cut above the average teen comedy thanks to generally sophisticated writing, winning performances by Anton Yelchin, Robert Downey, Jr., Hope Davis and Kat Dennings and the satirical swipe it takes at a culture that subscribes to the notion that a pharmaceutical a day will keep the blues away. The movie also comes replete with a couple of nice, comfy moral lessons to make us all feel better about ourselves in the end - namely, that we shouldn't compromise our integrity to achieve popularity, and that we need to learn to channel our creativity in a more "positive" direction if we hope to make anything of ourselves in this life.
In short, "Charlie Bartlett" is a "daring" comedy that doesn't really dare very much when all is said and done. Yet, while the movie does lose much of its edge in the second half - succumbing to too many "feel good" comedy clichés and only-in-the-movies moments - it still manages to leave us smiling in the end.