Wednesday, March 1, 2017

The Perks of Being A Wallflower

Logan Lerman plays "Charlie" in "Perks of Being a Wallflower", in a bittersweet coming-of-age story. The film is structured by using Charlie's letters to a pen pal to showcase the major plot points. Charlie is very bright, reads voraciously, could have a future as a writer.

Charlie has had a rough summer leading up to his freshman year in high school, and the prospects of being friend-less is a daunting one, but his fortunes turn as he finds a small set of older friends who are not quite in the "popular" crowd and have their own quirks, but they accept Charlie, and show him the ropes of navigating high school outside of school. Charlie crushes on Sam (Emma Watson), but she's emotionally unavailable, and he has to deal with other minefields with another female in the group later on, while also dealing with the fallout, and feelings of being ostracized. There are many really sweet, understated moments in the film that hit all the right notes of conveying Charlie's internal feelings, and other issues that are dealt with in the last act of the film.

I give it 3.5 stars, or a grade of B+.

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