“Charlie Bartlett” was originally scheduled for an August 2007 release, as you can see by the four posters below. But, as is the case with most MGM films, it is now set for a February 22, 2008 release. (See above poster). Among the classic high-school rebels of American movies, there have been truants, delinquents, pranksters and con artists – but there has never been anyone quite like “Charlie Bartlett” . An optimist, a truth-teller and a fearless schemer, when “Charlie Bartlett” slyly positions himself as his new school’s resident “psychiatrist,” dishing out both honest advice and powerful prescriptions, he has no idea the ways in which he will transform his classmates, the school principal and the potential of his own life.
This is the premise of the provocative, Prozac-era comedy, “Charlie Bartlett” , in which a wealthy teenager’s foray into bathroom-stall psychiatry becomes a smart, funny and touching one-man battle against the loneliness, angst and hypocrisy of the modern world.
Anton Yelchin () stars as “Charlie Bartlett”, who has been kicked out of every private school he ever attended. And now that he’s moved on to public school, he’s simply getting pummeled. But when Charlie discovers that the kids who surround him – the outcast and the popular alike – are secretly in desperate need, his entrepreneurial spirit takes over. Hanging up his shingle in the Boys’ restroom, “Charlie Bartlett” becomes an underground, not to mention under-aged, shrink who listens to the private confessions of his schoolmates, and makes the imprudent decision to hand out the pills he’s proffered from his own psychiatric sessions. Meanwhile, at home, Charlie keeps charming his way out of an inevitable confrontation with his adoring but utterly overwhelmed mother Marilyn (Hope Davis.)
Then, “Charlie Bartlett” makes his big mistake: falling in love with the beautiful and bold daughter (Kat Dennings) of the school’s increasingly disenchanted Principal played by Robert Downey, Jr. (), who is hot on his trail. As “Charlie Bartlett’s” world and fledgling psychiatric practice unravel, he begins to discover there’s a whole lot more to making a difference than handing out pills.
