"The Perks of Being a Wallflower," despite its earnest title and equally angst-ridden subject matter, is an excellent film. It's one of the very best teen movies ever made, right up there with "The Breakfast Club" in terms of hitting every emotional high mark while satisfying genre convention. I knew it was supposed to be "good," with
strong reviews and plenty of generational love for the book, but "good" for a teen movie is "10 Things I Hate About You," and this thing is more "Ordinary People" or "American Beauty" than I expected.
The acting is particularly excellent, especially from lead loner Logan Lerman, whose subtle facial expressions go miles beyond words in conveying the interior life of a shy, hurting teenager, and Ezra Miller as a wacky gay friend who takes the freshman under his wing (and introduces him to
Hermione Ally Sheedy Emma Watson, doing her best American accent/Ally Sheedy circa "St. Elmo's Fire" impression as his step-sister/BFF). Extra kudos to Mae Whitman, who you'll recognize from "Arrested Development" and other stuff, playing a punky alterna girl with pitch-perfect panache. She gets lots of laughs and rings true across generations, from these X-ers (it's set in 1991) to the indie kids of today.
I've never read the beloved 1999 bestseller by Stephen Chobsky,
a YA classic, but the author adapted and directed the film version of "Wallflower" so I probably get the picture pretty well. It was also a relief not to enter the theater with the unavoidable comparisons of my own mental casting choices to the movie's, and the only complaints I've heard about the movie are in this department. In any case, or the uninitiated, like me, "Wallflower" is a real surprise, a genuinely felt, pleasingly retro treat that delivered so far beyond the basic guilty pleasure I was expecting, I can't even tell you. It's one of the best films of 2012, and I'm shocked to say so.
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