Charlie Bartlett

Director:
Jon Poll

In Charles Schulz’s beloved Peanuts comic strip, eight-year-old enterpriser Lucy van Pelt ran a psychiatric version of a children’s lemonade stand offering questionable advice for the budget price of a shiny nickel, and in the hit 1970’s television series Happy Days, the compulsively leather jacket clad Fonzie commandeered the men’s room at Arnold’s which he turned into his “office” in order to share his own brand of questionable pearls of wisdom to the Milwaukee teens, preferring his age group’s highly coveted currency of cool points in lieu of coinage. More than thirty years later, when it comes to the perilous task of coming-of-age-- whether you’re eight or eighteen-- popularity still reigns supreme. And in the feature filmmaking debut from both director Jon Poll and writer Gustin Nash, the two combine the aforementioned pop culture concepts with pharmacological precision, managing to mix in classic teen films from the decades that followed including Harold and Maude, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Say Anything, Clueless, Rushmore, and Mean Girls to create the perfect prescription cocktail with minimal side effects, aside from a high likelihood of audience addiction to their film, Charlie Bartlett.

In the titular role, television actor Anton Yelchin turns in a winning performance as the mischievous yet terribly bright wealthy high school student Charlie Bartlett who, after getting ejected from the latest in a string of prep schools for unacceptable behavior including running a fake ID laminating press in order to be liked by his classmates, finds he’s left his exasperated, neurotic mother Marilyn (Hope Davis) no choice but to pack him off to public school. Fearing he’d make the wrong impression by arriving via his family’s chauffeur, unfortunately Charlie (like Jason Schwartzman’s Max Fischer in Rushmore) neglects to realize that perhaps wearing his prep school uniform and packing an attaché case isn’t the wisest way to fit in and sure enough, after first accidentally boarding the “short bus” for challenged students with special needs, he arrives only to find himself the victim of a toilet “swirlie” by the school bully Murphy Bivens (Tyler Hilton). Undaunted, he continues to try and put his best foot forward by greeting everyone with “Hi, I’m Charlie,” even going so far as to write it in a note to Susan Gardner (Kat Dennings), the beautiful girl who’d originally caught his eye but assumed he was a teacher, although ultimately Charlie ends up sitting with his friends from the short bus at lunch.

After spending time with the family shrink they have on retainer and being erroneously prescribed Ritalin, Charlie has an epiphany to recruit Murphy to become—if not his friend—then his business partner in selling the prescriptions at the school dance. Soon enough, Charlie’s access to mood altering medication makes him the go-to guy for all of his fellow classmates who begin lining up in the hallway for their opportunity to have a psychiatric consultation with the precocious new kid. By this time, Charlie has not only begun reading psychiatric and medical books to aid what ails his classmates but has also started shrink shopping to get the right pills in the hands of the right students who want to avoid parental embarrassment and HMO woes on their path to mental stability.

Naturally, the long lines for the men’s room begins to garner the attention of Principal Gardner (Robert Downey Jr.), who not only has professional concern for the well-being of his students but is especially irked when he realizes that his daughter Susan has become the target of Charlie’s affections. Worried the boy is just after his daughter for bragging rights, Principal Gardner tries to put a stop to all of Charlie’s extra-curricular activities, alienating himself from his colleagues, students and Susan in the process before viewers begin to realize that-- despite their age and situations-- Gardner and Charlie have much more in common than one would think as they both desperately want to be liked and are prone to self-medication,with the principal's preference being unwinding with a bottle of booze while piloting a motorized boat in his family’s pool. In a different world, it’s apparent the two could have been friends but when fatherhood and professionalism enters the equation, all bets are off. However, it’s the genius of the writing by Gustin Nash and in Jon Poll’s sensitive direction, that they never manage to sweep these issues under the rug, making every character equally vulnerable, equally innocent, and equally culpable in the scheme of things.

And while it seems like it’s the darkest subject matter for a teenage comedy to involve such a plethora of prescription medication, the filmmakers don’t handle this lightly at all, as Charlie’s actions do involve consequences, yet the tone of the film is far sunnier and more approachable than the superior yet icy Wes Anderson film, Rushmore. With a strong homage to Harold and Maude throughout as Cat Steven’s “If You Want to Sing Out, Sing Out,” is utilized numerous times to great effect, Bartlett seems to be the latest Generation Y incarnation of Matthew Broderick’s Ferris Bueller in that you just know he’d never do anything to actually endanger a fellow human being, instead realizing that-- much like his clueless friends-- he’s also lost the unattainable map directing them on their path from adolescence to adulthood as they struggle to find their way.

And while Bartlett's final act seems a bit rushed and far fetched to believe, the intelligence of the writing and the refreshingly earnest and sweet natured approach to the otherwise tired and overpopulated genre of crass, highly sexualized and cynical teen films, not only reminded me of a junior companion piece to Lawrence Kasdan’s Capraesque Mumford (also starring Hope Davis) but also earned Bartlett a spot at the head of the class of 2008 as this reviewer’s pet.

Ira and Abby

Director: Robert Cary

A few hours after the psychiatrist he’s been seeing for twelve years tells him it’s time to end therapy since their “relationship” is no longer working, Ira Black (Chris Messina) decides to tour a health club on a whim. With four pages of questions thrust at him on a fluorescent clipboard, Ira sits and waits for his tour only to have his beautiful, free-spirited guide Abby Willoughby (Jennifer Westfeldt) arrive forty-five minutes late, snacking on French fries and advising him not to join the health club since she hates exercise herself. Hardly the right way to approach a possible commission, Ira is intrigued despite himself by her openness right off the bat and the two reach a level of intimacy that most of us struggle to attain with a potential mate fairly quickly and before he knows it, he’s revealing intimate problems such as his aversion to making decisions or finishing things. An aspiring psychologist who is unable to finish his dissertation, the two chat for roughly six hours before Abby asks him to analyze her. He does so and it’s a negative, sharply defined analysis yet one free of any pretentions or flattery to lure her into bed and surprised by his accuracy, Abby impulsively asks Ira to marry her and even more to his surprise, Ira finds himself accepting and thus begins one of the most adorable romantic comedies in recent memory.

Winner of the Best Feature and Actress Awards at the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival in addition to other accolades at festivals across the country, Kissing Jessica Stein writer/star Jennifer Westfeldt penned an even more irresistible romantic comedy with the indie sleeper Ira and Abby. Director Robert Cary’s movie is so likable that, like as Ebert said about Juno, you almost want to "hug" it as it sneaks up on viewers with the leads’ tangible chemistry and unaffected dialogue that will have us falling in love with the film just as quickly as Ira and Abby fall for each other.

With terrific supporting turns by Frances Conroy, Fred Willard, Robert Klein and Judith Light and an authenticity, intellectuality and spontaneity that elevates it far beyond most mainstream Hollywood fare, I’m hoping that Ira and Abby, like another similarly themed indie favorite Happy Accidents, will find a much larger audience on DVD.

Dedication

Director: Justin Theroux

“Success in this business is 99% perseverance and 1% talent,” children’s book publisher Arthur Planck (Bob Balaban) tells three in-house illustrators before dismissing two of them to give the sole female, Lucy Reilly (Mandy Moore) her big break. By this point, it’s evident to the audience that the question isn’t whether or not Lucy is talented and she undeniably is but whether or not she can persevere to work with the publisher’s most unspeakably cruel, judgmental, depressing and misogynistic yet successful authors, Henry Roth (Billy Crudup) after his longtime collaborator Rudy Holt (Tom Wilkinson) dies.

With a constant unease about his existence and a preference to lay on the floor with heavy objects (usually books) atop his body to keep him feeling safe and secure, Henry is a walking time-bomb who, despite producing the wildly popular Marty the Beaver children’s book and being prompted for a sequel, spends most of his time alienating everyone he meets as punishment for his misery and “crap childhood” as well as imagining he’s speaking to Rudy throughout the film even while in the presence of Lucy. Eager to rip his new partner to shreds, he takes Lucy to a diner for a meeting and like most writers, proceeds to inventively create stories about those with whom he comes into contact yet each story is filled with such contempt and horror that Lucy soon flees, only to return with the promise of a two hundred thousand dollar bonus from the publisher to get the book finished, when she’s strapped for cash and nearly kicked out of her apartment by her controlling landlady, Carol (Dianne Wiest) who happens to be her mom.

Hardly the stuff of an “uplifting romantic comedy” as the back of the film’s box promises and while there’s not much going for the film to keep us invested for the first half, the actors (especially Crudup who by this point has made a career of playing neurotic jerks) keep us watching. In addition, there are enough surprises wherein the film fails to go down routes of predictability as when Henry, who beginning to have feelings for Lucy, has the means to crush her former flame seeking a second chance and doesn’t, to make us forgive some of its overly aware eccentricities the filmmakers hoped were quirky but in all reality were just plain annoying.

Making his directorial debut from a first time script by David Bromberg, actor Justin Theroux (Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle, Mulholland Drive) is best when giving his fellow character actors such as Crudup and Wilkinson a chance to shine and misguided when he tries too hard to make some moments overly romantic such as a cringe-worthy confrontation where Crudup pleads for Moore to take him back with more than enough bizarre profanity and crazy stream-of-consciousness dialogue to have anyone (let alone a possible mate) head for the hills. Still, particularly admirable in giving Moore another opportunity to break out of the twenty-something romantic girl movie pack in offering her character a story arc of her own. In Moore's hands, the thoughtful and intelligent Lucy becomes more than simply a one-dimensional cliché of the rescuing, selfless angel out to melt a cold man’s heart who masochistically casts hers aside in the process. However, similar to Lucy's character, overall, the bottom line of Dedication's success will be up to the viewers to decide whether or not they'd like to persevere in the company of Crudup's Holt for the film's entire running time.