Charlie Bartlett: Grade D

D
Charlie Bartlett (2007)
Anton Yelchin, Kat Dennings, Hope Davis, Robert Downey Jr. Director Jon Poll.

This high school, coming of age picture is half way between a comedy and a drama. As a comedy it is more along the lines of Napoleon Dynamite than the vulgar (but funny) humor of SuperBad, but it doesn’t contribute anything of its own, not the snappy teen dialogue of Juno, or the silly caricatures of Mean Girls. Dramatically, the movie poster quotes John Hughes’ 1968, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, about a high school wise guy, but that film had a charm that this heavy-handed and unmotivated story lacks.

Charlie Barlett (Yelchin) is a rich kid who has been kicked out of private school for reasons unknown, so his mother (Davis) enrolls him in public school, where he cannot make friends. There was a great opening here for some intellectual snobbery and class warfare humor, but it passes by. Instead Charlie sees a psychiatrist after being beat up in school (blaming the victim?) and the Dr. gives him Ritalin, which gets him high (which Ritalin does not do). Charlie starts selling the pills at school to win popularity. He reads the DSM to trick other psychiatrists into giving him additional meds (without his mother’s knowledge?) and soon he is a wheeler-dealer BMOC. He falls for the principal’s (Downey) daughter (Denning). None of the underage drinking, smoking, drug-dealing and drug taking is funny (or even noticed by adults). All the humor derives from Charlie being precocious about teenage mental health. The teens’ “rebellious” attitude toward the school administration is contrived. What kind of school is this, anyway? Nobody cracks a book, goes to a class, or throws a baseball. Hope Davis and Robert Downey Jr. give excellent performances worth seeing. Yelchin is a pretty face, but only competent as an actor, not a shooting star like Paige’s Juno.

Superbad: Grade B

B

Superbad (2007)

Jonah Hill, Michael Cera, Christopher Mintz-Plasse. Director Greg Mottola

What raises this teenage anxiety comedy above drudgery is the fine acting by all the young people. The cops (who include Seth Rogen, who co-wrote), played well too, but the characters were way too crazy to be taken seriously. The nerdy high school loser guys from Knocked Up are desperate to get laid before graduation, and to do that, they believe they must get the girls drunk, and to do that, they need fake ID to get alcohol. The bulk of the story is the adventure of trying to get the alcohol. There is a long dead spot in the middle where Hill and Cera crash an adult party and steal some booze, but except for that, the writing, editing and directing are sharp and often witty. I was a little disturbed by the matter-of-fact glorification of alcohol and drunkenness among teenagers, but maybe I am out of touch. In the third act, the college-bound guys come to terms with separation anxiety and begin to have real conversations with girls. The suggestion that Hill and Cera have a gay relationship is always under the surface and the idea is almost overdone, but it is used effectively to mark their rite of passage into adult heterosexuality. I was surprised at this turn of sophistication at the end of a uniformly vulgar slapstick comedy of stereotypes. Despite the sexual vulgarity, there is no nudity and the women are treated with respect by the camera. The unrelenting obsession with male genitals and the mechanics of intercourse in the first 90% of the movie wears thin, but good writing, acting, music and directing keep the laughs flowing.

Disturbia: Grade F

F

Disturbia (2007)

Shia Lebeouf, Sarah Roemer, Aaron Yoo. Director D.J. Caruso.

This is a horrible remake of Hitchcock’s Rear Window, for teens who presumably have seen neither the excellent original nor the mediocre Christopher Reeves remake. Lebeouf is a filthy rich teen under house arrest who uses binoculars and camcorders to spy on the neighbor girl (Roemer), and who begins to match clues on TV about a serial killer with another neighbor, leading to suspicion. For a while there is some tension as you wonder if he suffers from overactive imagination or whether he has discovered a real menace. But that thought quickly dissipates into slasher madness, which I guess teens like. This is a 45 minute story tops, the rest padding. Poor acting and directing are dominant, backed by undistinguished photography and music. The depiction of the teens is painfully pandering and stereotyped, yet conspicuously sanitized, having none of the sophistication of Harold and Kumar go to White Castle, or the insight of Napoleon Dynamite. In the opening segment there is an extremely well done car crash, although gratuitous to the story.