Friday, February 22, 2008

Charlie Bartlett

Suspension of all belief is an important mental prep job before entering the theater to see this. It's all a fantastical (yes I mean that) story about a likeable chronic sociopath of a teen who, after being tossed from yet another prep school - this time for fake ID making-enters public school when he returns home to live. He finds his way to popularity by conning his shrinks out of presciptions which he recycles as a pseudo-counselor while perched on a toilet in the boy's bathroom. He falls for the principal's daughter. He reforms the school bully. He calms an entire student body who looks to him for....oh screw it. Now- it is a good movie, an easy to watch movie, a weirdly upbeat movie with a real ending. Nevertheless, it requires a good deal of seeing past the holes. Any kid dealing psych drugs from an attache case in the bathroom of a high school would be put in juvenile detention in about 5 seconds. Okay- as just a movie- it's good. As a movie that is based in any reality at all- it would be pretty bad. So approach it that way. It'll be easier. Alex really liked it. He'd have given it 3.5. I just can't.