"The Perks of Being a Wallflower" - Film Review

My streak of watching film based on “unadaptable” books continues with The Perks of Bring a Wallflower. The cult novel’s author Stephen Chbosky wrote and directed the movie and much of the novels appeal remains intact with his guidance. Like the novel it takes its title from, Perks is a film about all those scary, dark, uncomfortable places life takes us, and with sincerity, honesty and heart it tells a narrative about high school that’s about so much more than high school (the story ends up dealing with a range of topics including abuse, drugs, and sexuality).

Logan Lerman is rather well-suited for the titular “wallflower” role of unreliable narrator Charlie Kelmeckis. Awkward, lanky, friendless as he enters freshman year, Charlie has had a rough go the past few years. His medical history is hinted at enough to give us the sense that he was in a mentally dark place in middle school (most of this relating to an incident involving his dead aunt, which much the like the novel never feels like it fits in with the rest of the story, but unfortunately needs to be told). Charlie flounders around, bullied, misunderstood, and too meek, shy, and mentally scarred to form any meaningful connections. That is until he meets Patrick and Sam. Ezra Miller gives the right amount of happy-go-lucky flamboyance to Patrick, while Emma Watson turns out to be surprisingly well-suited for enigmatic, anti-Manic Pixie Dream Girl Sam, who has a lot more shades of grey than Hermione Granger ever showed. The brother and sister begin to see how kind the quiet, gentle Charlie is and how desperately he needs friends, and they bring him into their world where he finally belongs amongst the “Island of Misfit Toys”

It was an early scene that made me realize how good the film would be both as film itself and an adaptation of the book: Charlie tells Sam about how his best friend killed himself. It’s the little beats of the rhythm of telling this that make it work so well. For example, the moment after where a scared, heartbroken Sam whispers to Patrick, “Charlie just told me his best friend killed himself. I don’t think he has any friends” where I told myself: “Woe, this is going to be good”. And it really is in its own idiosyncratic, honest, heartfelt way. The little touches to solid scenes like this are played with emotions on their sleeves and captured by strong performances and a great script. 

Charlie “wallflowers” his way through one situation after another, but fails to actually live life for himself. He just wants other people to be happy. Thus he doesn’t ask out Sam, who he has an undying crush on, because he doesn’t feel it’s what she wants. He dates Mary Elizabeth even though he doesn’t actually have feelings for her (and then goes on in devastating fashion to break her heart). He lets his sister get beat up by her deadbeat boyfriend (and in fact way more and worse things happen to his sister in the book– which is a shame because Nina Dobrev is actually a really good actress and she’s underutilized). And the consequences, both good and bad, of his “wallflowering” are played out with careful attention to detail.  

The Perks of Being a Wallflower is a charming, surprisingly good adaptation of Stephen Chbosky’s great novel.

Grade: B+