Fresh from kicking insurgent ass in drolly superheroic fashion in Iron Man, Robert Downey Jr can next be seen in our multiplexes in Charlie Bartlett, out this Friday. Billed by its publicists as a “cool, edgy comedy for the Prozac era”, the film centres on a wealthy misfit who finds himself dispensing advice and psychotropic drugs in his high school boys’ toilet. Downey Jr stars as the bemused headmaster matching wits with the teen entrepreneur, played by a puppyish (and Poppy-ish) Anton Yelchin, last seen here as the doomed kidnappee in Nick Cassavetes’ Alpha Dog. Here’s a clip.
Comparisons have already been drawn to that other high school rule-breaker, Ferris Bueller (manipulative, precociously articulate protagonist? Check. Clashes with a recalcitrant authority figure? Check. Hammy crowd scenes where the protagonist basks in the love of his peers? Check.) But will Charlie Bartlett be anywhere as generation-defining as Matthew Broderick’s serial truant?
