Movie review: 'Charlie Bartlett'

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1 star (out of four)

Anton Yelchin is officially on notice. As of “Charlie Bartlett,” he joins “Superbad’s” Michael Cera on the shortlist of sweet, talented young actors who have become one-trick ponies and need to get a new shtick fast. Yelchin’s quirky, vulnerable, smart-kid performances were the best part of the otherwise weak “House Of D” and “Fierce Creatures,” and he’s the best part of “Charlie Bartlett” as well. But since he’s run out of new things to bring to the table, that isn’t saying much.

First scheduled for release in mid-2007, “Charlie Bartlett” has been delayed and postponed so many times that it’s a wonder it didn’t slink directly to DVD. (Though a theatrical release on the traditionally dead Academy Award weekend is about as close as it comes.) Yelchin stars as the titular Charlie Bartlett, a brainy but socially inept child of privilege who has been kicked out of so many prep schools that he’s forced into public school.

Naturally, when he shows up for his first day sporting a prep-school blazer, tie  and attache case, and speaking with the nerdily precise diction of a “Star Trek” Vulcan, he becomes instant bully-bait. But when he starts manipulating psychiatrists into loading him up with Ritalin, Xanax  and other pharmaceuticals, he becomes a school hero for his willingness to analyze and medicate his fellow students. He even scores points with the hot daughter of the dubious school principal (Robert Downey Jr.).

Like the similarly artificial, candy-colored “Sydney White” last year, “Charlie Bartlett” asks audiences to believe that its protagonist is so sheltered that he has no clue how bizarre his precious, overly mannered behavior looks to his peers. (Or how annoying it might be to audiences.)

And yet, like Sydney in “Sydney White,” he wants to be accepted, but doesn’t ever try to fit in, so his entire school changes to accommodate him instead. It’s a passable wish-fulfillment fantasy, and first-time director Jon Poll gives it a shiny, lively gloss. Borrowing equally from Wes Anderson’s “Rushmore” and John Hughes’ “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” he and first-time screenwriter Gustin Nash concoct a bouncy fairy tale supposedly celebrating weirdness, but mostly boosting an only-in-movies brand of cutesy non-conformity.

Parents may be uncomfortable with the way Charlie’s popularity relies on his drug supply, and with the way Downey —easily the film’s most emotionally nuanced character—is vilified throughout. But “Charlie Bartlett” isn’t for adults, any more than Hughes’ movies were. It’s for teenagers, who are meant to embrace the film’s limp anti-authoritarian mockery and its vague satirical points about adult hypocrisies and failures.

But are teenagers really supposed to identify with a clumsy caricature such as Charlie, who, in spite of all his expulsions and school crimes, comes across as a gawping, perpetually surprised infant in an adult body? Surely even Yelchin doesn’t see echoes of himself in his ridiculously unreal hero. And surely even he’s aware that he needs to get into a better class of films.

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