CINEMA: Charlie Bartlett

Here we have yet another ‘new kid who doesn’t fit in at school’ movie, but this time, there’s a different riff to it. The new kid is Charlie (Anton Yelchin), who is very bright and also very troubled. The son of millionaire parents, Charlie has been thrown out of every good public school his frustrated mother (Hope Davis) can find, so now he has to go to a regular high school. Maybe someone should have told him it wasn’t a good idea to turn up on his first day in the family’s chauffeur-driven limo, and unsurprisingly he gets beaten up by school bully Kip (Mark Rendall). But the resilient Charlie soon finds a solution to the problem by supplying the school with the prescription drugs he’s being handed like sweeties by his psychiatrist. With a constant source of Ritalin, uppers and downers, Charlie soon becomes the most popular boy in the whole school.

Although there’s something self-consciously ‘alternative’ about Charlie Bartlett there’s also an awful lot to admire. Yelchin has a nonchalant charm as chancer Charlie, but he’s well-matched by Rendall as the misunderstood bully who comes good at the end. There’s a nice cameo from Robert Downey Jr as the school principal, but best of all is Hope Davis as Charlie’s pill-popping, Martini-drinking mum. More should have been made of her role and we don’t see nearly enough of her, but if you’re looking for a film with a smart script and a wry smile on its face, this fits the bill nicely. Dee Pilgrim