Charlie Bartlett

Now what exactly is this film about? A poor little rich kid missing his parents? A principal trying to run a school of hardboiled kids? Misguided teens and their angst, with no one to listen to them? Misuse and the easy availability of drugs? Or perhaps, as in case of most teen emergencies, almost nothing at all?

Even that would work, except that Charlie Bartlett decides to be faux serious, and keeps adding layer upon layer till it is playing on your nerves. Half that effort, and this could have been American Pie.

You feel the worst for Anton Yelchin who plays Bartlett. He is a true find and a natural as a teen forced to don the role of an adult in the absence of a father — who is in jail — and in order to take care of a mother — who refuses to take charge. Remember Juno? Bartlett could be the male version. However, here he is dishing out wisdom and psychobabble, apparently without any reason and without applying any of it to himself.

The rest of the school is apparently full of no-brainers, who will take Bartlett’s words or the drugs he freely distributes, in the men’s toilet, no questions asked.

Robert Downey Jr as the alcoholic principal and Hope Davis as Bartlett’s cheerfully clueless mother try to inject a much-needed levity, but the film keeps pulling them down and down.

shalini.langer@expressindia.com