CHARLIE BARTLETT ( 15) **
DIRECTED BY: JON POLL
STARRING: ANTON YELCHIN, ROBERT DOWNEY JR PROVING once again that Rushmore is the most influential American indie film of the past decade, here's another quirky, offbeat high-s
chool comedy that cribs from Wes Anderson's classic – as well as from T humbsucker, Election, Ferris Bueller's Day Off and Pump Up the Volume (among many others) – without offering anything new.
No, scratch that: Charlie Bartlett does at least take the novel approach of making all of its characters unlikeable, although director Jon Poll and screenwriter Gustin Nash seem to have happened upon this strategy by accident rather than design.
They certainly seem to expect us to identify with and like the film's titular rich kid hero (played by Anton Yelchin), an eager-to-please legend in his own mind who, after being kicked out of yet another private school, endears himself to the student body of his new low- rent, publicly-funded place of learning by supplying his classmates with prescription meds and psychiatric evaluations.
With a zonked-out mother, and a father in jail for tax evasion, we're supposed to view blazer-wearing Charlie's behaviour as symptomatic of a society full of ill- equipped adults whose failure to take responsibility for their offspring has spawned a generation of disaffected, Ritalin-addicted kids.
Any points it has to make about these issues, however, have already been made more effectively in the more serious teen films from which Charlie Bartlett steals its ideas ensuring that, as it works through its designed-by-committee plot that ticks every box marked "out-of-the-box thinking", all we're left to root for is a gangly, slightly creepy kid who probably deserves every beat- down he's ever received. And don't be swayed by the presence of Robert Downey Jr either.
As the alcoholic headteacher of Charlie's new school – and the disapproving father of the super- smart Goth girl upon whom Charlie forms a crush – old Iron Man has little to do except run through his usual tics and tricks, which, while briefly diverting, aren't rooted in a plausibly- written character, thus feel more tired than inspired. In the end, it's a bit much to expect us to have compassion for the characters' myriad quirks and foibles when its makers clearly have none.
The full article contains 401 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
