The Perks of Being a Wallflower

In The Perks of Being a Wallflower, 15-year-old Charlie is recovering from a traumatic event in his life (the recent death of his best friend) and trying to adjust to high school. He soon finds a group of friends who haven't followed the herd mentality of adolescence, or so he thinks, and begins to find himself in them. Actually, when you read the plot of this movie in those terms, it sounds awfully cheap.

Some of the ideas in Wallflower seem so calculated to wrench out your heart that you feel writer-director Stephen Chbosky, who adapted the screenplay from his own 1999 novel, is performing the work of a surgeon, not a filmmaker. His movie resurrects a lot of the old devices and archetypes, including the hip, self-aware English teacher (Paul Rudd, more amiable than he's ever been because he doesn't appear to be trying so hard, nor does he seem as jaded as usual), and the parents who "just don't get it." Yes, Wallflower has most of the cliched ingredients of a teen drama. But yet it also has an effervescent sort of charm to it. You can't really feel any disdain for the world this film creates, because it's authentic, imaginative. Moreover, the relationships between adolescents and grown-ups and between adolescents and adolescents, is shown to be far more complex than "the parents just don't get it" or "the jocks don't talk to the geeks." It's refreshing.

Logan Lerman carries Wallflower with his wonderful performance, one of the strongest by an up-and-coming actor in recent memory. His Charlie feels the pain of everyone he knows, even of those who have caused him pain, and he can't let it go, or imagine it away. He reminded me of young Timothy Hutton in Ordinary People. Lerman makes it look so easy because he is, often, the most together of his friends (probably because he's hiding all his own problems so he won't fall apart.) The supporting cast includes Emma Watson, as Sam, the girl Charlie has a crush on, and Ezra Miller, as Patrick, Sam's step-brother, a remarkably self-aware young man who's also miserable because he's gay and has to keep his relationship with one of the football players a secret.

Wallflower is a wistful movie, one that makes you slightly depressed to have passed your teenage years, and slightly exuberant because you remember how bad they were, even if they weren't as cinematically bad as in this movie. (There are a lot of lovely moments in between the sad parts, though). I kept going back in my mind to John Hughes' movies, as they were, for me, the quintessential high school movies, even though they failed to reflect my own high school experience, which of course happened later than the 1980s. The high school experience that's reflected in Wallflower isn't in the same territory as a John Hughes movie though. It's more realistic, less sitcomish. You almost wish the John Hughes vision of high school life could be true, because it's such a fairy tale. Full of complications but all of them solved by the denouement. Wallflower won't solve the problems. It illuminates the people and leaves the problems where they are: some will go away with time, some won't. But the spirit that thrives in this joyful movie isn't nearly as temporal as those four years of prison, hell, and torment, or alternately freedom, euphoria, and excitement. And I liked that about it.

With Dylan McDermott and Kate Walsh as Charlie's parents, Johnny Simmons, Melanie Lynskey (as Charlie's Aunt Helen), Mae Whitman, Erin Wilhelmi, Joan Cusack, and Tom Savini. 102 min. ★★★½

The Campaign

Disappointingly undercooked political comedy. If you're hoping that The Campaign will provide some leavening comic relief from the election blitz, you may feel you've simply sunk even lower into the bowels of American politics by the time the credits roll. Will Ferrell and Zach Galifianakis, as rival contenders for a North Carolina Congressional district, prove how convincingly they can play horrible people. There are scattered laughs, but the movie tries to have it both ways: it's a showcase of the unmitigated greed and buffoonery of politicians who don't have the first notion of what it means to actually do their job, as well as a dirtified Frank Capra-ish tale of what it would be like if a truly honest politician were elected to perform some much-needed housecleaning. Neither tack works, because The Campaign fizzles pretty soon after it begins. The characters have no appeal, most of the actors aren't all that funny, and the scattered laughs only point up the amount of time there is between them. The audience I was with seemed to overcompensate with its laughter during the funny moments, as though we were laughing at what we hoped would be a funny movie that was only intermittently successful. And, if vulgarity turns you off, you would do well to avoid this movie. Crassness can be very funny, but only when it's clever. Here it's just chaotic and stupid.

Jay Roach once again demonstrates his infantile directorial sensibilities. He turns an ostensibly golden premise into a not-ready-for-publication waste of time, with little help from the writers, Chris Henshy and Shawn Harwell. You can tell that Ferrell and Galifianakis improvised a lot, but their mugging doesn't work as much as they probably hoped. (Ferrell never was all that funny unscripted.) Of course they have their moments. Both of them reek of comic potential, but they never do enough with their characters, which are essentially stereotypes: the good-old-boy politician who can't keep his pants on and talks in platitudes, and the creepy, prissy mama's boy who is inexplicably married with two sons. They never transcend these paper-thin roles, and you get the feeling it's because they haven't thought about what could be done with them. Will Ferrell always looks too self-contented with the mediocrity of his work.

There were a few actors in the supporting cast who give the movie a little pizzazz: Katherine LaNassa plays Ferrell's spouse, the ultimate trophy wife who knows how to play the supportive "other half" on screen as long as she gets what she wants. And Dylan McDermott, as Galifianakis' campaign manager, looks self-assured and cruelly dedicated to his job, which is being funded by two rich old brothers (played by Dan Aykroyd and John Lithgow) who remind you of the old millionaires in Trading Places. In fact, The Campaign borrows more than a little from that movie's plot line.

With Jason Sudeikis as Ferrell's campaign manager, Brian Cox, Sarah Baker, Jack McBrayer, and a number of real-life media talking heads (Piers Morgan, Chris Matthews, Bill Maar, to name a few) appearing as themselves.