Charlie Bartlett

Charlie Bartlett is a movie that dares to be touching, funny and achingly emotional all at the same time.

Director Jon Poll skillfully navigates huge shifts in tone by making sure every scene has humor and heart.

Working from a screenplay by Gustin Nash, director Jon Poll explores teen angst and its consequences with a subtlety and insight that's rare on the big screen.

A surprisingly strong addition to the high school comedy genre with more rounded characters and realistic situations than one normally gets, veering far enough away from the cliches to bring new ideas to a tired old genre.

Charlie Bartlett will do for Anton Yelchin what Juno did for Ellen Page: launch a career.

Unexpectedly smart comedy about the fraught give-and-take between kids and grown-ups.

Charlie Bartlett starts off as an acerbically modern teenage comedy in the vein of Juno and ends up resembling a movie that might have starred Anthony Michael Hall back in the day.

Much like its title character, Charlie Bartlett just doesn’t fit in with its peer group (teen movies and psychology dramedies). And both the character and movie go to show you that sometimes it’s good -- in this case very good -- not to fit in.

In the tradition of Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Charlie Bartlett finds the essence of cool in someone who really isn't.

Charlie Bartlett is an often-laugh-out-loud-funny comedy that takes aim at privileged WASP culture and the public school system with equal fervor.

It's not hard to guess how director Jon Poll spent the '80s: His first movie is an affectionate callback to My Bodyguard, Risky Business, and every high-school movie John Hughes ever made.

Think of a darker, edgier, grittier Ferris Bueller, and the nature of Charlie Bartlett begins to come into focus.

Charlie Bartlett brings a bit of realism -- kids on drugs, kids smoking, kids having sex -- that doesn't usually make the grade in the genre of addled adolescent angst.

Charlie Bartlett is as charming as its smart but over-the-top script allows it to be, dispensing as many doses of wisdom as controlled substances along the way.

Charlie Bartlett handles the subject cautiously, but doesn't get overly serious or preachy. That approach makes for plenty of laughs in this dark comedy.

Charlie Bartlett is a refreshingly entertaining character study that refuses to dumb down its youthful cast or bury their concerns in service of a catchy soundtrack.

The search is on for the next Juno. But it isn’t Charlie Bartlett, a film introducing us all too self-consciously to a would-be generational icon in the Holden Caulfield-Ferris Bueller mold.

Take Ferris Bueller and add prescription drugs and you have Charlie Bartlett, an arch and intelligent teen comedy that might not have worked as well if Juno hadn't primed us for it.

No doubt the filmmakers of Charlie Bartlett were hoping for a new-style Ferris Bueller's Day Off, but the results are rather rancid.

Here's a name to remember: Anton Yelchin. OK, no one said it would be easy to remember. But make a mark of it: This kid's going to be around for a long time. He's got charisma, cool and cocky likability to spare.

Almost everything in Charlie Bartlett is based on successful teen comedy formulas of the '70s, '80s and '90s, like My Bodyguard, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Footloose, The Breakfast Club and Say Anything.

The timing couldn't be more awkward for Charlie Bartlett. Last week, eight Douglas County high school students had a run-in with the painkiller oxycodone that sent them to the hospital.

First-time director Jon Poll (who edited Meet the Fockers) and screenwriter Gustin Nash handle both the light and the dark halves with skill, but the sum makes for one tonally schizoid movie.

At its best, Charlie Bartlett is an edgier update of the teen-oriented movies John Hughes made in the ’80s. At its worst, it’s another ’80s staple -- an “Afterschool Special.”

Like its star, Charlie Bartlett works a little too hard to earn our approval.

Charlie Bartlett mixes and matches tropes from Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Risky Business, My Bodyguard and several other teen classics to sporadically hilarious effect.

There is probably a way to make a movie about teen prescription-drug abuse that is funny without being problematic, but this movie doesn't find it.

In the continuum of teen comedies, Charlie Bartlett is an overachiever that fares better than most by striving to harness the charming wisdom of Rushmore and the goofy good times of Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

The film scores a casting coup with rehab poster boy Robert Downey Jr., who brings gravity and impeccable comic timing to the role of the overwhelmed, boozing administrator.

The film rests squarely on Anton Yelchin's slim shoulders; he's in every scene and, happily, a pleasure to watch.

Appropriating many of the rebel responsibilities of Ferris Bueller and Rushmore's Max Fischer but little of their fresh charms, the title teen iconoclast of this antic yet bland comedy is showily updated for our psychotropic age.

Charlie Bartlett desperately wants to be the next link in a chain of smart, subversive, fun teen-rebellion movies from Ferris Bueller's Day Off to Juno. But it never develops its own identity enough to stake that claim.

There are reasons to admire Charlie Bartlett, but its search for the right tone ultimately ends in vain.

It overdoes the quirkiness and underdoes the character development, but, in the end, it's salvaged by a remarkable performance by Robert Downey Jr., who hardly ever gives any other kind.

Considering that both the writer and director of the film are unseasoned, the film feels remarkably accomplished.

The movie actually opens with a lot of promise, thanks to Charlie’s good-hearted ingenuity and a look at the difference between being liked and being respected.

Without even bothering to rearrange the furniture, the wan comedy Charlie Bartlett lifts its scenario straight out of Rushmore.

Seeing itself as a Ferris Bueller's Day Off for the 21st century, Charlie Bartlett the film is instead a testimony to how low we as a culture can stoop.

Charlie Bartlett and his friends may or may not need therapy. But Charlie Bartlett needed one more rewrite.

This new, R-rated teen comedy would very much like to become the emblematic high school movie of its time, and its stellar cast and topical storyline about overprescribed pharmaceuticals help kick Charlie Bartlett toward the vicinity of its goal line.

Mediocre writers ignore reality, opting for clumsy wish fulfillment and hoping we won't notice they make no sense. Sadly, Charlie Bartlett is an example of that school of non-thought.

The first-time filmmakers -- director Jon Poll and screenwriter Gustin Nash -- have clearly watched a lot of John Hughes teen comedies. Unfortunately, this movie feels like one of his weaker efforts.

At its best, Charlie Bartlett is a sly teen comedy that satirizes angst-filled high school students and the adults who love to overmedicate them. But like the teenager at its core, the movie can't maintain the ruse forever.

Charlie Bartlett would like to be Ferris Bueller's Day Off for the 21st century. I have seen Ferris Bueller. And you, Mr. Bartlett, are no Ferris Bueller.

A comedy about high school, it floats by on a reasonably even keel until the last act or so, when it spirals out of control in an impressively bad way.

Those waiting for the arrival of the next Juno may want to skip Charlie Bartlett, a relentlessly earnest teen film about a 17-year-old misfit who's been tossed out of one prep school after another for bad behavior.

If you can ignore the film's too-cool-for-school attitude, there are at least some good players here.

The characters remain halfway between genuine comic creations and realistic individuals, and the whole narrative feels artificial, stuck in the tension between being a morality play and a freewheeling comedy.

A largely likable teen comedy that's a lot more square than it wants to admit, Charlie Bartlett nods toward its ancestors but isn't really sure what it wants to emulate.

Imagine an R-rated Ferris Bueller with only the most annoying parts of the younger Matthew Broderick's screen persona emphasized and you'll draw a bead on Bartlett.

Charlie Bartlett is a fantasy that panders to high school teens.

Director Jon Poll is a former film editor but his film doesn't hold together well at all. Gustin Nash's script has a few clever moments but mostly just radiates stupidity.

It's as if director Poll and screenwriter Gustin Nash watched Rushmore on a loop and tried to make it palatable to the mall crowd.

Charlie Bartlett has the gumption to suggest, and then confirm the fact, that rich people, especially rich white kids under 18, have all the answers, and that it is quite foolish to think otherwise.

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.