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CHARLIE BARTLETT
Directed by Jon Poll
Produced by David Permut, Barron Kidd, Jay Roach & Sidney Kimmel
Written by Gustin Nash
Director of Photography, Paul Sarossy
Edited by Alan Baumgarten
Music by Christophe Beck
Released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer/Sidney Kimmel Entertainment
USA. 97 min. Rated R
With Anton Yelchin, Robert Downey Jr., Hope Davis, Kat Dennings, Tyler Hilton & Mark Rendell

Charlie Bartlett might be just a touch more skewed than what you’re expecting from a teen comedy. To writer Gustin Nash’s credit, he does one thing above all else: he creates an optimistic protagonist with next to none of the cynicism that pervades many a teen hero, and within the limitations of the plot, Charlie Bartlett is, as he strives to be, likeable. He’s been kicked out of every single private school his half-bored, half-midlife crisis-bound mother (Hope Davis) has put him in, so he’s sent to a regular old public school. He arrives wearing the suit and tie from his prep school, making him an immediate outcast and target for bullies.

The turn of the tide comes when he’s sent to a psychiatrist who, after hearing Charlie’s delusion of grandeur – standing in front of a huge and cheering crowd – prescribes Ritalin. After taking it, Charlie freaks out in a very funny montage of him running around in circles in an empty pool, going through homework at a mile a minute, and ending with him running down the street at night in undies only. But an idea occurs to him after a lonely kid, Kip (Mark Rendall), comes to him confessing his feelings of dread and anxiety. Ritalin won’t do, Charlie says, but perhaps something else will. Soon Charlie becomes the local pharmacist/psychologist of the school, catching the ever-watchful eye of alcoholic Principal Gardner (Robert Downey Jr.), and as it happens, unintentionally, Gardner’s daughter, Susan (Kat Dennings). Wackiness ensues!

It’s wackiness, I might add, that comes with the territory. We’ve seen in many teen comedies the mid-section where, lo and behold, there will be a party, a big one, where some fun and possibly intimate moments occur (I don’t need to run down the long list of late ‘90’s teen comedies here), or a school play is in the works. Or even the matchup between the rebellious kid and the stalwart principal. Hell, we’re even given the semi-mystery of Charlie’s father's disappearance, and these parts do make Charlie Bartlett feel like territory traveled once too much.

But it’s the little cracks in the form – the moments when Nash’s screenplay breaks free from being simply a chuckling affair and provides real belly laughs with acidic and stinging one-liners (“I'll see you in the sequel, bitch!”) – that lift the film out of its conventional traps.

The points made about prescription drug use among teens, and how that reflects such usage by adults, is not so much a controversy here: the film’s more about how Charlie interacts with and becomes a kind of spiritual force among his peers. Yelchin is a genuine article among new young actors. He doesn’t have any trouble fitting into this somewhat complex, ultimately amiable, and sensitive kid who’s about as hip as… a kid peddling pharmaceuticals and sound psychological advice and wanting to be liked can get. Jack Gattanella
February 22, 2008