Charlie Bartlett



Directed by
Jon Poll

This has all the makings of a Disney Channel TV series except for one small thing. It's about the high school drug dealer. Charlie Bartlett (Anton Yelchin) is too good to be true. He's one of those lovable rogues that everyone roots for even though he probably deserves everything he's going to get...nah!

Gustin Nash's script begins with the obvious, Charlie is getting expelled again for selling phony drivers licenses. So, with no posh private school willing to take him, his mom (Hope Davis) is forced to send him to the local public school. Of course wearing his old school uniform gets him beaten up by the school bully (Tyler Hilton), who soon becomes his partner in crime, but there's the delightful Susan Gardner (Kat Dennings), who's sole fault is that her father (Robert Downey, Jr.) is the school's principal. So, with the family's shrink more than happy to over-prescribe various drugs like riddlin, and soon our hero has become the most popular kid in the entire school. Then something happens and Charlie is in big trouble once again. Can he get out of it this time?

This is basically your standard high school comedy. Not that his is a bad thing, of course. One the one hand, Yelchin is chewing the scenery a little too much, and that makes the film a tad too cute. On the other hand, the supporting cast, most notably Downing as the principal and Mark Rendall as the kid who something bad happens to, are uniformly good, and despite the boilerplate feel, this knocks it out of the park. The sad fact is that the film's rated “R” and there are going to be a lot of kids sneaking in from what is probably more wholesome entertainment. In other words, the intended audience isn't supposed to see this. But they will. Which in this case is fine.
 


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