Entertainment
Charlie Bartlett Suffers from an Identity Crisis
Greg Kaczynski |
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 Charlie Bartlett, oh Charlie Bartlett, what do you want to be? Do you want to be just another light teen romp through John Hughes Land, or would you like to grow up and hang out with edgier teenage fare like Pump Up the Volume? You have clever dialogue that is occasionally very funny; there are predictable, tender moments surrounding young love; the dreadful topic of teen suicide is breached (albeit in an off-handed and somewhat unrealistic way); and there are fluffy moments aplenty as your eponymous protagonist charms his way inconsequentially through a confusing world of popularity and drug use. You could have been something great, Charlie Bartlett, if only you had chosen a path and committed to it.
This is the story of young Bartlett, a gifted teen who just wants to be popular. He comes from a broken but well-off family and just can’t seem to make his oft-dreamt fantasy of being the most loved kid in school ever come true. After being kicked out of another private school (this time for making fake IDs), Charlie is sent to the local public school where the lines between social cliques are more harshly drawn than ever and Charlie is dreadfully lost.
After being severely beat up by the bully, Charlie decides to bring a healthy dose of his therapeutic prescription drugs to the troubled teen population. This decision not only leads Charlie down his destined path of becoming the coolest kid in school, but also creates bigger problems for Bartlett. Sort of. Herein lies the problem of the film: the stakes are never truly raised.
Charlie Bartlett is full of heart, don’t misunderstand this. The movie is fun, the acting is mostly great, it’s pretty, but it’s not quite all there. It hits all of the proper notes that a film like this is supposed to hit to make the audience smile, feel inspired and get teary-eyed all at the prescribed times, but there is something missing.
 The first possibility is the character of Charlie himself. So many things about him simply don’t ring true. For instance, Charlie is very bright--bright enough that he gets kicked out of private schools for elaborate shenanigans--yet not quite bright enough to realize he’s literally on the short bus to his new school. Oh, that’s a funny joke, so maybe that’s why it happened; in a movie like this, though, situations that are there just for a gag don’t fit with the rest of the world, and there are multiple situational leaps of illogic like that throughout the film.
Then there’s the fact that Charlie never faces consequences for anything he ever does. He simply puts on a happy face, believes in himself and everything turns out all right. Fair enough, but when Charlie is at least partially responsible for attempted suicide and rampant teen drug use, there needs to be some acknowledgment of reality or else the world we’re being asked to believe in falls apart. It begins to feel false, easy and of no significance.
Or maybe the problem lies within Principal Gardner, the father of Charlie’s crush and (again, sort of) Charlie’s nemesis. The big issue here is that not only is the principal a more believable and sympathetic character, but he actually feels the depth of the repercussions of his actions. He’s an adult who sees the big picture and at one point even sits down and tries to work with Charlie.
Principal Gardner is like us: he’s multi-faceted, and yet we’re expected to side with Charlie throughout the film. Not only is Robert Downey Jr. a more skilled and nuanced performer than Anton Yelchin (Bartlett), but he simply has more material to work with. Because of his character’s backstory and current struggles, Charlie’s attempts at becoming popular through abusing the system (and Gardner) come off as painful to the audience, as the repercussions are felt mostly by Gardner.
 This is essentially the crux of the problem with Charlie Bartlett. There is a point where we, as an audience, are supposed to side with Bartlett’s optimism. We’re supposed to see him as a lost soul who only wants to be loved. We’re supposed to see him as the maverick at this school of nobody-specials. In turn, we’re supposed to see Principal Gardner as the foil. He’s the guy who’s standing in the way of Charlie’s biggest dreams and he just doesn’t get it.
What the filmmakers ignore is that Charlie doesn’t get it. While Gardner deals with a painful separation and bouts of alcoholism, Charlie smiles his way through one misadventure after another. A fellow student attempts to kill himself, Charlie puts his arm around him and essentially says, “Pal, it will all be all right.” He introduces prescription drugs to the entire school population, and in one fell swoop, Charlie admits his error and removes the supply without the mess of oh, you know, withdrawal pains. We’ve been given a one-dimensional high school world rife with three-dimensional problems and it does not add up. It doesn’t work.
There are some truly inspired moments and situations and some very smart cinematography, but ultimately the many pieces of Charlie Bartlett do not fit together to make a cohesive whole. So many parts are from two different worlds, impossible for them ever to reconcile and be one in the same, and the end result is a film that doesn’t deeply affect the audience.
One final note that overshadows everything that’s already been mentioned is that Charlie Bartlett, while being a confused character in an unclear world, also never grows. Because his decisions never carry any proper weight or consequence, he is never forced to change. By the end of the movie, Principal Gardner has actually grown and evolved more, making this reviewer wonder if the film shouldn’t have been called Principal Gardner.
Charlie Bartlett is now playing in theaters.
For more information, visit charliebartlett-themovie.com.
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