Charlie Bartlett

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[4.0
stars] [IMDb Link]

You don't necessarily expect a high school drug dealer to be a sympathetic character, but …

Seventeen-year-old Charlie desperately wants to be popular, but the only tactics that occur to him are ones that put him at odds with school and legal authorities; as the movie opens, he's being thrown out of his latest private school for the manufacture and sale of fake IDs. We learn that his family is insanely rich, but his dad is mysteriously absent, and his well-meaning mom lives in a clueless fog fueled by Chardonnay and Klonopin. In desperation, she decides it's time for Charlie to live at home and attend public school.

Things don't start well for Charlie; his preppy accessories and manners irk the local bullies, and he can't make inroads with the popular kids. But he hatches a scheme when his psychiatrist carelessly misprescribes Ritalin for his problems. Soon Charlie's playing shrink for the entire school, supplying prescription drugs as he deems necessary. (Fortunately, Charlie's perceptive and empathetic, and a quick study in matters pharmaceutical, so this doesn't immediately turn into a disaster.) He woos and wins the lovely Susan, and runs afoul of the princpal, Susan's father, played by Robert Downey Jr.

The movie is (slightly) honest when it finally plays out the consequences of Charlie's amateur psychiatry and drug-dealing. It's way too facile in resolving the various resulting crises. But it's funny and unpredictable, and I had a good time.

The actor playing Charlie, Anton Yelchin, is also in the new Star Trek movie, playing Chekov. This raised my Trek-fanboy expectations for the movie even higher.


Last Modified 2024-02-01 5:22 AM EDT