Oh to be a teenager! Prescription drugs, melodramatic relationships, and a high school revolution make up this tale of teenage life. In fact, there are so many major events incorporated into this film that it was nearly impossible to experience a major connection to any one particular character. Instead, you find yourself semi-concerned about all of the characters at once.
The movie, starring a long list of actors including Robert Downey Jr., Anton Yelchin, Hope Davis and Kat Dennings, begins with seventeen-year-old Charlie Bartlett being expelled from yet another private school. As a last resort, his somewhat neurotic mother brings him home to live and enrolls him in public school. His public school experience is not going so well, until he discovers that his new Ritalin prescription brings with it an opportunity for popularity and entrepreneurship. He soon appoints himself the high school psychiatrist and starts prescribing medication and holding regular sessions in the boy's washroom.
Overall, the movie seems to effectively capture the chaos of the teenage life, with a few exaggerations. Most of the teenagers in the movie are, as Charlie Bartlett so eloquently puts it, "screwed up", and the parents all have issues of their own. Charlie seems to be trying to rescue the other teens in an attempt to avoid dealing with his own problems. The writer has tried to take most of the major and somewhat traumatic issues that teenagers and their parents experience during a five or six year period, and wrap them up into about an hour and a half.
Not a bad film to take in while relaxing at home on your couch. Genuine comedy combined with realistic and somewhat heart wrenching events make the movie worth investing your time into.
