Movie review: ‘Wallflower’ follows familiar coming-of-age formula
Coming-of-age stories cycle around for each new generation with a predictable cargo of psychological baggage, pop-music cues and outré hipster style.
Whether it’s Holden Caulfield raging against “phonies” in “A Catcher in the Rye” or the detention ragamuffins of “The Breakfast Club” baring their aching teen souls, stories of navigating the rocky road through high school follow certain time-honored contours.
In “The Perks of Being a Wallflower,” writer-director Stephen Chbosky, adapting his own best-selling young adult novel, hits all the customary notes – a timid, misfit suburban teen caught in an existential crisis; a pair of cool, artsy outsiders who take him in; a gay student with a crush on a closeted star athlete; an older “bad girl” who gently shepherds our self-aware freshman through his first romantic crush, and scads of pop-culture period prompts that range from “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” through pharmaceutical misadventures to peppy tunes by The Smiths, XTC and Cocteau Twins.
While the emotional arc of the story seems fairly predictable, Chbosky gently marshals the talents of a remarkable cast to breathe vivid life into his scrupulously offbeat characters and manages to assume an empathetic voice and authentic teens-eye-view that lend his film an engaging air of freshness and compassion.
Vaguely set in the early 1990s, the thin, episodic story focuses on bright, gawky teen Charlie (Logan Lerman), entering high school with no friends and a heavy load of adolescent angst (relating to the recent suicide of a friend, the death of a troubled aunt and his own resulting depression).
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