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Movie Description
At the start of CHARLIE BARTLETT, the title character (Anton Yelchin) is expelled from yet another elite boarding school. This incident is just one in a long chain of expulsions resulting from Charlie's eccentric behavior. Despite his charming looks and wealthy upbringing, Charlie is just as insecure and unconfident as many teens. In fact, it's his intense desire to be popular that gets him into trouble. His high-strung, heavily medicated mother (Hope Davis) persuades him to enroll in public school, where he wears a prep school blazer and an all-too-eager look on his face. When he meets school bully Murphey (Tyler Hilton), who shoves his head down a toilet bowl, his dreams of acceptance are quickly crushed. But the young entrepreneur soon finds another use for the same bathroom stall, setting up shop as the school's unlikely shrink to his troubled fellow students, who line up for unorthodox counseling and medication that Charlie gets from his family's on-call psychiatrist. Charlie's the talk of the school until he catches the eye of the depressed Principal Gardner (Robert Downey Jr.). If Charlie is forced to shut down his little enterprise, will his popularity also disappear?
CHARLIE BARTLETT is another addition the offbeat teen dramedy genre, with elements strikingly similar to THUMBSUCKER, RUSHMORE, and ROCKET SCIENCE. With the help of strong performances by Yelchin, Davis, and Downey Jr., CHARLIE BARTLETT attempts to appeal to a more mature audience. Despite being precocious, Charlie is innocent at the core, exploring the inner goodness of even the school's meanest bully. As a result, the film shifts back and forth between adult cynicism and childlike wonder as Charlie learns that it's okay to be just a kid.
Industry Reviews
3 stars out of 4 -- "[P]acked with smarts and sass. Anton Yelchin delivers a starmaking turn as Charlie..."
Rolling Stone - Peter Travers (08/09/2007)
3 stars out of 4 -- "[A] clever, inventive and ambitious comedy with echoes of RUSHMORE, FERRIS BUELLER'S DAY OFF and HAROLD AND MAUDE..."
USA Today - Claudia Puig (02/23/2008)
3 stars out of 5 -- "Charlie Bartlett is at its most interesting when it nudges the boundaries of good behaviour..."
Empire - Sam Toy (06/01/2008)
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