Review of "The Perks Of Being A Wallflower" - Misfit Story Brought To The Big Screen

[philosoraptor42]

The Perks Of Being A Wallflower (2012)

I've never been a big fan of Harry Potter, so Emma Watson's face on the poster wasn't much of a draw. However, when positive reviews started coming in and I heard that this was being praised as a great adaptation of a beloved novel, I was intrigued. Good adaptations which please fans of the original novel are not terribly easy to come by.

It turns out that I actually recognised a lot more actors than just Emma Watson. An even earlier familiar face to appear was Ezra Miller. Not sounding familiar? Well he's not exactly a household name yet, but just you wait. Ezra Miller played the oldest incarnation of Kevin in "We Need To Talk About Kevin" and he was suitably creepy there, but here he is seriously chewing the scenery. He gives an absolutely incredible performance in "Perks" and it makes it clear just how much he'd been holding back before.



Another familiar face is Johnny Simmons who is mostly in the background during this movie. He played "Young Neil" in "Scott Pilgrim Vs The World", making it somewhat jarring to see him here as a popular jock on the American Football team.

When Emma Watson shows up and gets some lines, she more than holds her own. She gets a much bigger chance to shine here than in "My Week With Marilyn" where she had a tiny part in the scheme of things.



One face that was not at all familiar was the protagonist, Charlie, played by Logan Lerman. Charlie is moving from middle school to high school and he's absolutely dreading it. Apparently he has some issues, although it's not really spelt out what they are until randomly he says that his friend committed suicide.

At the start of the movie Ezra Miller and Emma Watson's characters are three and two grades ahead of Charlie in school respectively. That would put the ages of Charlie, Patrick (Ezra's character) and Sam (Emma's character) as follows: 14, 16, 17. That's quite a big jump.

When Patrick and Sam realise that Charlie is struggling to make friends and recognise that he's reasonably intelligent, they decide to introduce him to a whole new group of people. They enlist him into their group of rebellious misfits who share a common interest in indie music.



At this point I was admittedly really buying into the world of the film. A character who didn't fit in with the normal crowd was being shown a whole group of people who refused to accept the status quo and who would help him to feel accepted outside of the stupid peer groups he'd normally felt alienated by. Great!



Unfortunately his new and different friends quickly start feeling more like indie movie cliches. Patrick's gay and his boyfriend's dad is a massive homophobe, willing to use violence on his own son. Sam has a history of abuse (apparently her first kiss was by her father's boss when she had not yet reached her teens) and keeps choosing boyfriends who don't treat her very well. And perhaps making mix tapes and performing in "The Rocky Horror Show" aren't mutually exclusive, but it's never entirely clear how Charlie, as a fragile introvert, is managing to fit in with this new group's loud and energetic clique.



Emma Watson's character Sam becomes way too much of a love interest for Charlie. Certainly this wouldn't be a problem if it was handled well. But it isn't handled well. It's handled very poorly, suggesting wishful thinking on the part of the writer in favour of his Mary-Sue protagonist. We first see that they are going to become an item when Sam decides, despite being already in a relationship, to give Charlie his first kiss. She does this because she wants Charlie's first kiss to be with someone who loves him, but insists that she doesn't intend to break off her current relationship.

As the film goes on it seems that it is Charlie's duty to 'save' Sam from her bad relationships. She's only going out with these bad boyfriends because (and this line is obnoxiously repeated as if they were quoting Shakespeare) "we accept the love we think we deserve". She thinks she deserves arseholes, but she REALLY 'deserves' the protagonist. See where they are going with this?



In spite of being two to three years below them in the school and in spite of still being mostly an outsider to the group, Charlie starts getting looked on as a viable object of sexual affection by his newfound friends. Once he's seen in this way it's only a matter of time, it seems, before he'll be able to give Sam the relationship she's always deserved. *groan* We even have the absurdity of the protagonist helping Sam, a girl two grades above him, to complete her SATs. Sure, we know that the English teacher is giving Charlie extra books to read because he recognises Charlie's 'hidden potential', but that doesn't mean Charlie can help someone with exams that are testing an extra two years of school work. It's really sad to see Emma Watson's initially vibrant character being turned into a damsel in distress like this.

Another line the writer repeats because he seems to think is profound when it just comes off as cheesy is: "we are infinite". It's left at the end of some more sentimental scenes as a way of punctuating the film, but all it really does is uncover how vapid the film is. The best the film seems to have to offer is that certain moments in our adolescence feel perfect in spite of any issues we might have to deal with.



It became rather harder to sympathise with the characters when I realised that they are all absolutely stinking rich. They have a big celebration where they give each other expensive presents and I just could not accept it. Presents like a tuxedo and a typewriter are not just items that you pick up on a whim. Considering that these characters can afford to buy each other expensive presents, it's particularly odd that we barely see anything of their parents during the course of the film.



The era of the movie is another issue. The film has the characters giving each other mix tapes, which is fine. But some of the music is clearly late 80s and it's clear that the protagonists are interested in music that is not current. Why then, are there absolutely no CDs seen throughout the film? It's almost like the filmmakers don't remember the era they are portraying. In the early 80s CDs were first introduced and by the end of the 80s everyone was using them. Many people on the internet are claiming that this film was set in the 90s which means CDs should be everywhere - and yet all that is seen in the film is cassette tapes and vinyl records. This might seem petty, but in a film where setting apparently matters so much, I had real problems with the way the era was portrayed. I was convinced that this must have been set in the mid-80s because it simply didn't feel right to me at all, but the early 90s should feel much more familiar to me than this.

Perks Of Being A Wallflower begins by promising to show us how an introverted character is taken in by a new exciting group of friends who are going to be able to change his life for the better. However, as the film progresses this becomes a typical indie movie, with typical cliched characters and typical teen angst. Meanwhile the central character is revealed to be not just an introvert, but also someone whose intellect is misunderstood and who 'deserves' to 'get the girl'. Basically, this is the NiceGuyTM fantasy whereby hanging around the dream girl long enough means she'll eventually realise you deserved her all along. *ugh!*



From early in the movie we see flashbacks of Charlie's aunt, who used to be his favourite person in the world apparently, saying "it'll be our little secret". Yes, that does go where you expect it to. Yes, it does take nearly the whole movie for the inevitable reveal to take place. Yes, it is a case of "feel my man pain" for the mary-sue protagonist.



"Perks Of Being A Wallflower" is a self-righteous and cliched story, but it is performed brilliantly by the star-studded cast and it is filmed very well. My conclusion? Stephen Chbosky is a better director than a screenwriter. Perhaps he's too close to the source material? The film looks beautiful and the performances are wonderful, but the content? It's just trash.

E+