Check
This One Out! - The Perks of Being a Wallflower
Sam: "Why do I and everyone I love pick people who treat us like we're nothing?"
Charlie: "We accept the love we think we deserve."
The
Perks of Being a Wallflower is directed by Stephen Chbosky (The Four Corners of Nowhere) and stars
Logan Lerman as Charlie, Emma Watson as Sam, Ezra Miller as Patrick, Mae
Whitman as Mary Elizabeth, Nina Dobrev as Candace, Dylan McDermott as Charlie's
Father, Kate Walsh as Charlie's Mother, Johnny Simmons as Brad, Erin Wilhelmi
as Alice, Adam Hagenbuch as Bob, Nicholas Braun as Ponytail Derek, Zane Holtz
as Chris, Melanie Lynksey as Aunt Helen, Paul Rudd as Mr. Anderson, and Joan
Cusack as Dr. Burton.
Charlie is a shy and socially awkward
teenager starting his first year of high school. He has just come back from a
mental health center to get better, but everyone he was friends with has
changed and he is now a wallflower, someone who watches everybody and their
actions from the sidelines; never actually being involved (basically everyone
who deals with social anxiety). Fortunately, he meets two seniors, Patrick and
Sam. Now we watch lovable Charlie live the joys of relationships and love,
while also dealing with the mistakes he makes with his new found friends and
his mental illness. It's life in a nutshell through the eyes of a beautiful
human being (who also happens to be a freshman in high school).
Damn, I've been watching a lot of beautiful
films lately. The Perks of Being a
Wallflower is no exception either. This movie actually is personally more
beautiful to me due to the portrayal of mental illness and its host's
interaction with it and life. It's rare to find those films that can accurately
represent an illness as complicated as depression and turn it into a funny,
charming, sad, and heart-warming study case of a movie. Thank you, Logan Lerman
for allowing us to see the hurt and confused person behind Charlie's happy and
kind shell. This is hard for Hollywood to do, for some reason. They usually
show the mentally ill as dangerous or crazy, whatever that means. Anyways, it's
not only the portrayal of mental illness that drew me closer into the story,
but it was also because of the dialogue. Holy crap, were the characters so real!
To those who've seen The Perks of Being a
Wallflower, you might think that the dialogue might be a bit theatrical or
filled with forced emotional context/conversations. I can easily counteract
that with one word: clique. What I mean is that the group Charlie is a part of
with Sam and Patrick are outcasts and weirdos; they don't fit in with the jocks
or the nerds. To be honest, they're kind of emo. However, the more and more I
think about it, their interests can fit into the whole spectrum of high school
cliques. That's actually why I love this movie so much: the main characters are
real. Everybody has different interests and passions. A star quarterback on the
varsity high school team (typically considered a jock) could love reading comic
books (activity typically associated with geeks) or the guy who sits at the
lunch table by himself/herself playing Minecraft
(typically considered a geek) can really love playing soccer and be very
skilled (an activity typically associated with jocks). This movie doesn't
conform to stereotypes. It reflects the reality of people in high school. We
really should have more movies like this. On top of that, The Perks of Being a Wallflower is also a romance film. Yeah, you
heard right! This is literally just life throughout a year in high school. I
think I may be just a bit biased, but these are the kinds of films that get to
me because I can see some events that happened in my life in a variety of
scenes in this genre (coming of age).
I never had a daredevil clique in my school. They were actually just called dumbasses, but in the movie it looks as hell.
If this doesn't interest you, then the
soundtrack will. Why is it that coming of age films usually have terrific
soundtracks? Whatever. I'm not going to fight it. It unfolds my love for these
films even more so I'm not complaining. I have been watching a string of these
movies lately and I think The Perks of
Being a Wallflower is among the best of the ones I have seen (there have
been probably 7 or 8). Please, please, please take 1 hour and 45 minutes to
watch this film. It will make you cry, laugh, and think. Isn't that what you
want out of a movie? Maybe a couple of explosions here and there, but hey, they
can't always beef it up with violence.
The Perks of Being a Wallflower is rated PG-13 for mature thematic
material, drug and alcohol use, sexual content including references, and a
fight - all involving teens
Click here to watch the trailer
The Perks of Being a Wallflower is now available on DVD, Blu-ray,
and Digital Download
Thanks for reading, everybody! I really do
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already seen The Perks of Being a
Wallflower, comment and let me know what you think of it. I'll post another
Check This One Out! next week. Thanks again!
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