Charlie Bartlett is currently showing on Sky Box Office and FilmFlex
We all remember high school – the good times and the bad. Back then I belonged to ‘the geeks’ with my silly glasses and atrocious wardrobe. I definitely wasn’t a loner, but you just don’t make that many friends when your favourite film is The Sound of Music. However, one of my few but closest pals, Madeleine, did end up living in Salzburg for a year and then she went on to became a priest. I’d like to think that Julie and I somehow influenced her choices.
My Swedish small-town high school was pretty lame and, despite the usual divides, certainly not as harsh as high schools in the US, if you choose to believe any of the gazillion movies made about them. Titles like Can’t Buy Me Love, Clueless and the more recent 17 Again, make American high schools look like war zones. I always thought it was totally exaggerated, until a friend of mine from the UK who did an exchange told me it really was cheerleaders and footballers versus the Chess Club – more or less.
When I saw Charlie Bartlett, I instantly fell for the loveable main character of the title – the geeky rich-kid (played by Anton Yelchin) who sets himself up as his new school’s unofficial psychiatrist in order to gain popularity.
What I think makes Charlie so likeable is that he is driven not only by the idea of popularity, but also by the genuine desire to help his peers because, as he points out, nobody else (i.e grown-up) seems to want to.
As an added bonus, Robert Downey Jr’s alcoholic Principal Gardner and Hope Davis as Charlie’s unconventional mother are utterly hilarious.
