tMF | The Movie-Fanatic

tMF is coming up with its list of 10 Best Performances from young actors. This Blog-a-thon will run this week and a final post will feature tMF's top choice. In this feature, we have one of Hollywood's most sought-after young actors - Anton Yelchin. In Charlie Bartlett, Yelchin showed moviegoers his flair for comedy. Not every actor can be successful at making people laugh, but Yelchin did! With two big movies (Star Trek and Terminator Salvation) already raking huge box office sales, Yelchin is on the roll. But it was his performance as Charlie Bartlett, the rich kid who becomes the self-appointed psychiatrist to the student body of his new high school, the reason why Yelchin made our list!

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Career-defining role: I saw him first in David Duchovny’s The House of D and I know that this young kid will make it big someday. After a host of TV appearances, Yelchin proved that he’s the real deal in Alpha Dog. The Nick Cassavetes’ film may not have been a total success, but it brought much praise for the young actor.

In Charlie Bartlett, Yelchin proved that he can take the lead and carry a film.

Expelled from yet another private school for his blossoming, though illegal, entrepreneurial activities, wealthy teenager Charlie Bartlett (Yelchin) finds himself at regular high school. His smart, geeky appearance gets him a first day beating from the school bully so his overly medicated mother (Hope Davis) calls in the family psychiatrist to help him out. An opportunity not to be missed, Charlie sets himself up as the school agony aunt, dishing out advice and prescription drugs, courtesy of the family shrink, from the school restrooms. His charm, charisma and access to medication soon starts to win him new friends as well as the attention of the principal's daughter, much to the annoyance of the principal (Robert Downey Jr.) a man battling his own demons in this cool, edgy comedy.

Hundreds of hopefuls auditioned for the role of Charlie but Yelchin essentially sealed the deal in his first meeting with its director Jon Poll.

"He blew me away," recalls Poll. "I just felt like here's Charlie Bartlett. He was incredibly empathetic and really funny. And what made me realize he was perfect is that he said it was the honesty and optimism of Charlie that drew him to it. If anyone was ever destined to play a part, I think it was Anton as Charlie Bartlett."

"I really wanted to show what drives Charlie to be this person who acts in such comical ways. I wanted to show that he has kind of had to parent himself, and that he is someone who responds to his own sadness with humour," added the young actor.

For Yelchin, the challenge was in constantly straddling the film's comedy and depth.

"The role calls on everything from slapstick to drama," he notes, "and it left a lot of room for experimentation so I just had a lot of fun with it. It was a thrill being able to come up with so many ideas because that's what I love to do." As for Charlie's controversial "occupation" as psychiatric drug dealer, Yelchin says: "In all honesty, it's one of those subjects that people have to deal with and I think this story is a great way to start the conversation."

Critical Acclaims

New York Times' critic Stephen Holden commented on Yelchin's performance:

Ever since he played a forlorn 11-year-old boy in the insufferable 2001 tear-jerker "Hearts in Atlantis," the Russian-born actor Anton Yelchin has seemed destined to step into the shoes of Hollywood's favorite quiz kid, Matthew Broderick. And in the precociously articulate title character of "Charlie Bartlett," he may have found a contemporary equivalent of Mr. Broderick's beloved hooky-playing high school trickster, Ferris Bueller.

Mr. Yelchin has the routine down pat. He speaks in the elevated, faintly whiny tone and deliberate cadences of an honor student tossing off a difficult oral exam. Even under stress, he exhibits the composure of a smarty-pants who, beneath his lost-boy affectations, is inordinately pleased with himself. In spite of your qualms, you root for him. [ read more ]

Flick Philospher's MaryAnn Johanson also compared this movie to Ferris Bueller, and sums up the movie:

Like Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Charlie Bartlett becomes, in its exploration of the troublemaker who's so attuned to his generation that he exemplifies all that defines it, a satire on how that generation was shaped by its elders. And this one is awash in mood-altering pharmaceuticals -- who needs illegal drugs when you can simply take speed that's been trademarked and marketed and corporatized and prescribed to you? Charlie Bartlett -- the feature debut of both film editor turned director Jon Poll and scriptwriter Gustin Nash -- isn't merely Ferris Bueller on drugs. It's a head-shaking cry against the attitude that has transformed, a turn of generations on, Ferris's freespirited antiauthority wisecracking and creative entrepreneurship into a psychiatric verdict, a problem that needs to be fixed, a character flaw to be permanently excised from a young person's psyche. [ read more ]

The Last Word: Let me just mention a quote from the movie for my ending:

I guess I should tell you about the first time I had my period. My daddy was driving me back from summer camp, and I turned to him and said, "Daddy, I think I'm sloughing!" And he said, "That's nice hunny." And I realized, that he had like, *no idea*, what sloughing meant! So I explained to him, that it meant blood was gushing from my you know where! And he nearly wrecked the car, trying to hand me a wad of fast food napkins, which is not something you'd want to particularly stick up your hooch!