the perks of being a wallflower stephen chbosky

Like Holden, Charlie oozes sincerity, rails against celebrity phoniness, and feels an extraliterary bond with his favorite writers (Harper Lee, Fitzgerald, Kerouac, Ayn Rand, etc.). More sophisticated readers might object to the rip-off of Salinger, though Chbosky pays homage by having his protagonist read Catcher in the Rye. Miller, who brings texture to his witty if sensitive gay quipster.Aspiring filmmaker/first-novelist Chbosky adds an upbeat ending to a tale of teenaged angst-the right combination of realism and uplift to allow it on high school reading lists, though some might object to the sexuality, drinking, and dope-smoking. The results are likable, unsurprising and principally a showcase for the pretty young cast, notably Mr. Chbosky brings you into this familiar world through the usual cinematic points of view, by way of Charlie’s eyes, voice and flashbacks, but also through the ubiquitously hovering camera. Instead of trying to mimic the book’s epistolary voice, Mr. And because so many of those tears and fears are so familiar, they can’t help being pretty touching: In melodrama, we cry for them, but also for ourselves.

Beyond the clothes and tunes, much remains the same about these unwonderful years, including the dreads, dreams and bullies. Even so, many of the same matters that sent the teenagers in “Rebel” into such beautiful, stirring agonies - sex, sanity, conformity, masculinity and its discontents - trouble Charlie and his friends too. Charlie’s parents aren’t tearing him apart, to borrow a celebrated howl from “ Rebel Without a Cause,” the ur Teen Angst movie. The anguish of adolescence may be different for everyone, but the movies about those years of sorrow and confusion rarely deviate from the template.

Buoyed by these two and several other self-identified nonconformists, including a sexual steamroller, Mary Elizabeth (a lively Mae Whitman), Charlie experiences what almost every teenage hero does in an American movie about nominal outsiders: he finds his tribe and then himself. His prayers are answered when he’s rescued by the friendships he makes with Patrick (a charismatic Ezra Miller) and Patrick’s stepsister, Sam (Emma Watson). He not only directed the big-screen teenage confessional “The Perks of Being a Wallflower,” which tracks the ups, downs and playlists of an introverted high school freshman, he also wrote the 1999 young-adult book on which it’s based.Īs in the novel, the story turns on Charlie (Logan Lerman), a melancholic teenager who has endured his share of sorrows and, when the story cranks up in 1991, is praying to make it through the new school year. Stephen Chbosky is at least one director who can’t be accused of having bowdlerized or betrayed a beloved novel.

The perks of being a wallflower stephen chbosky