Perks Of Being A Wallflower

I'm going to start by admitting an immediate bias - I'm a seventeen year old. I'm not going to be able to look objectively onto a film like this, and so despite its many, many flaws, I thoroughly enjoyed it.

The film is written and directed by Stephen Chbosky - the writer of the novel from which it's based. I know nothing of the book, so I can't comment on the faithfulness of the film to it. The film shows freshman Charlie (Logan Lerman) starting his first day of High School after a spending time in a psychiatric hospital. Charlie is a writer (which I assume is in some way relevant to the plot of the book, but in the film, is almost irrelevant except for a lovely scene involving a "Secret Santa" gift,) who is taken under the wing of the close half-siblings Sam and Patrick (Emma Watson, Harry Potter and Ezra Miller, We Need To Talk About Kevin). The three, along with the rest of their "misfit" gang (I know, it is silly), go off to do strange things, listen to apparently unpopular music (now the songs that every teenager knows), have fun, and fall in love at the wrong times with the wrong people.

What did I like? Well, the cheesiness and the not-quite quirkiness. It toed the line perfectly between that amazingly young, crazy I-can-do-anything mood and "hmmm, you're pushing it." The majority of this genre of movies tends to set up camp in the latter for me. So for that, it needs to be congratulated. The cheesiness was warranted as well - it's so easy to scoff, but to look back, the taglines and pseudo metaphysical quotes are exactly the thoughts of angst-y, emotional teens. Easier for me to see than most, I guess.

Performances, no complaints, at all. Special mention to Ezra Miller - played his part fantastically.

There are problems - many of them. Not just plot holes, but pointless wastes of time and parts of sheer disbelief in generally believable characters. Do you know what? I don't think they matter, if you, like me, get drawn into everything Chbosky wanted you to be. I was engaged, so I ignored everything I didn't like - and that's the sign of a good movie.

All-in-all, I was not looking forward to it when I went in - came out very pleasantly surprised. I'd recommend anyone with one memory of one night of sheer youthfulness left in their head, go see this film.