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Goooooo teens! That’s the surface message of director John Poll’s movie Charlie Bartlett, but the best message is a bit buried.

The eponymically-named movie centers around, natch, Charlie Bartlett (Anton Yelchin). Bartlett is an ultra wealthy kid wearing the preppy mask of Richy Rich, but he fits in more with a crowd from The O.C. or the doucheois that is the entire cast of The Hills, what with the drama that swirls around him; the problem is that Charlie causes most of it. Realizing that popularity is the only true measure of success in high school, Charlie only wants to be liked and has been kicked out of every private school in or around his home town of West Summit; his only option left is the jungle that is West Summit High School, a public school. With his coat and tie, Bartlett is shunned with insults and fists until he discovers his path to respect via the inspiration of his scrip-addled, immature mother and trip down Riddlin lane: selling drugs. Charlie quickly enlists the help of bully Murphy and sets up his own psychiatric practice in the boys bathroom, listening to problems and prescribing meds to the other students. The student body forms an addiction to Charlie and he becomes their leader, throwing parties and generally causing a ruckus. He also catches the heart of Susan (Kat Dennings) and the suspicious interest of her father, the school’s principal (Robert Downey, Jr.) who quickly sniffs out his racket. As a result of tragedy which spurs awakening, Charlie realizes he’s trying to take care of everyone, but no one is taking care of him and that his own popularity is only limited by his own beliefs.

The cast of Charlie Bartlett inspired, but it has its faults. The fresh-faced Yelchin plays adult-Bartlett believable and with the appropriate bursting confidence due the character, but when he breaks down and becomes a kid again near the end, he never hits the right notes; luckily that’s just a small portion of the film. Downey turns in his usual riveting performance as Principal Gardner, who is both caring father and alcoholic. With this and the recent Iron Man, Downey is undergoing a cathartic silver screen journey, and we’re all the better for it with work like this. Dennings is amicable as Susan, playing much the same character as she did in The 40-Year Old Virgin, but with more maturity and rebellion. She’s able to spread her emotional wings a bit with Downey (which she does with aplomb surpassing many of her peers), but she really only has one moment where she’s able to break out of the stereotypical teenage role.

Teenage empowerment; that’s the main message that writer Gustin Nash seems to want to drive home, as if we all aren’t self-righteous and self-empowered enough in those hormone-raging years, with that impudent front rapidly making its way towards quarterlifers (at least Stateside). Buried deeper however, are nice critical vignettes of the latch-key society, both parents’ key involvement with their progeny, pharmacology, and the soul-destroying climb of corporate ladders. They’re subtle criticisms though; at times almost too subtle.

Nash’s script isn’t breathtaking, but having grown up an only child (but way on the other side of the tracks of the Bartletts), the piece plays very true and believable to that sense of exceeding maturity and loneliness that I held as a child, and still feel at times. Bartlett’s outgoing personality and reaction to his situation isn’t what I’d call the norm, given my experience with other similarly-rooted types, but then a depressed teenager on the verge of crippling depression rarely makes an interesting or inspiring character or movie. In this film, that character, Kip, is left for the background, striking a noteworthy plot device, but not taking center stage. Charlie is what I wished I could be: powerful and popular. Realistically, I was listening to other people’s problems, especially girls, but with little recognition of the lip-lock variety I was seeking. In that, Charlie Bartlett is my hero.

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