I haven’t written a review for a long time, but that was because I was waiting for this puppy to come out. Being a low budget but high quality indie about high school, it’s hard to find in theaters, but worth all the effort.
Basically, a high school freshman named Charlie writes letters to an anonymous friend (the reader/audience) and it turns out that he has issues, including the suicide of his best friend and a mess of social anxiety issues.
Luckily, he meets two oddball friends, stepsiblings Sam and Charlie, who turn him around and push him forward to his coming-of-age moment. But it’s a lot more fun and emotional than that. The plot itself and the nostalgic 90’s setting are perfectly intertwined and the soundtrack (with extra Rocky!) is brilliant and gives an extra sense of grounding and reality that brought it above the book. The book is a definite must-read as it expands on subplots briefly touched upon in the movie such as Charlie’s family life, but the movie definitely keeps the meat of the plot in there by focusing on everyone’s dark secret pasts and the Charlie/Sam love story.
Even if you’re not interested in a high school movie, go for the performances. Emma Watson sparkles as Sam and is a fine supporting actress here, Ezra Miller is hilarious and multidimensional as Patrick, and if Logan Lerman (as Charlie) was a girl, he would totally get an Oscar nomination (like J. Lawrence, H. Steinfeld, A. Breslin, S. Ronan, and K. Castle-Hughes) but alas, his incredibly sympathetic and subtle performance will be passed over this year in favor of the traditional favorite (and undeniably awesome actor) Daniel Day-Lewis as Abe Lincoln. But, this has definitely cemented Logan as a rising star, and I’m sure we’ll see him grow to DiCaprio levels of fame and finally win something when given the right material.
I’d see The Perks of Being a Wallflower again and again, and so you should see it at least once.
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