The Perks of Being a Wallflower
starring Logan Lerman, Emma Watson, Ezra Miller, Mae Whitman, KayWalsh, Dylan McDermott, Joan Cusak and Paul Rudd
screenplay by Stephen Chbosky
directed by Stephen Chbosky
Rating: ♦♦♦♦◊
I have watched Harry Potter stars Daniel Radcliffe and Rupert Grint performing in other movies since the end of the Harry Potter franchise. But Wallflower is the first post-Potter film I’ve seen Emma Watson appear in, even though I know she’s made several. So far she’s been more active and successful in cinema than her famous Potter co-stars. Although I had heard good things about it, I hesitated to rent Wallflower because I don’t think so highly of Emma Watson. As Hermione Granger her acting was satisfactory, but I discovered in celebrity interviews that she is a profoundly horrible speaker. Listening to her, or to most British women talk is like listening to Caroline Kennedy flap her gums. Yuck! It turned out okay, though. As long as Watson has a director to tell her what to do then the audience is spared her natural verbal debility.
Why do we, and everyone we love, pick people who treat us as though we were nothing?
We accept the love we think we deserve.
Based on the book by Stephen Chbosky, Wallflower is a coming of age movie set in a Philadelphia suburb in the early 1990s. The teenage reality/coming of age movies I watched as a youngster featured the likes of The Breakfast Club (1985) and other John Hughes movies. Personally, I don`t get stories of high school alienation that feature bullying by upper classmen. I very much dig alienation featuring existential angst and girls. But bullying? Here`s the thing: in high school I didn`t give a shit what my peers were doing or what they thought of me in return, so I don’t have a lot of sympathy for teenage stories that use that kind of plot device. I was more intelligent than the average bear and I tended towards a confident, snarly, non-conforming group of kids. If someone tries to bully you, you bully him back. If they humiliate and abuse you, then you come back with a board and put the fuckers in the hospital. Finished. Call it self-defense. So long as the bullies are alive one can’t talk about inappropriate violence.
Wallflower presents teens in a particular bad spot. Having survived childhood sex abuse a small group find solace and belonging in each other’s friendship. The film features Charlie - intelligent beyond his years and an unconventional thinker - in his freshman year, and his affinity with a group of seniors preparing for their exit for college. The movie features a lot of great 80s music. In the end it was pretty good. My favorite character was Charlie’s Goth-punk-Buddhist-vegan girlfriend with the short haircut and the industrial piercings, Mary Elizabeth played by Mae Whitman. It’s so like me to be attracted to that kind of girl.
Because the story is set in the early 1990s no one is using cell phones, thank God. The total lack of that kind of technology impinging on people’s behavior is noticeable. It’s universal in contemporary stories.