Saw this at a screening tonight, great disappointment. Knew nothing about it other than it starred Hope Davis and Robert Downey Jr, and it still managed to be well below my meager expectations.

Charlie is 17, lives with his pill-popping mother in a multi-million dollar estate, while his dad is in prison for tax evasion. His by-the-book character gets kicked out of boarding school after boarding school for various enterprises such as creating fake IDs for students.

The movie begins with him attending a public school (for the first time), and explores his endeavors to “become popular in high school, because - what’s more important?” - a question he genuinely (yeah, seriously) asks his principals, mother, and other authority figures at least 3 or 4 times in the movie.

He is extremely bright, but ends up getting prescribed Ritalin for his “reckless” behavior, and ends up selling it to kids at school (since apparently all high schoolers know it’s the drug of choice for getting high). He begins his own psychiatric practice in the boys restroom stalls, listening to problems and “prescribing drugs” to his classmates. The movie precedes to show how Charlie is able to help others with their issues, from campaigning against video cameras in the student lounge, to helping the bully start his own crime syndicate, yet at the same time has serious daddy issues.

Ultimately, the school scenes had little more realism or interest than a recycled 80’s “Saved by the Bell” episode, and the utter lack of effort in originality and dimension to any character other than our mildly developed Charlie, gave me the same queasy feeling I get from watching old public service ads.

Hope Davis had great delivery for her 10 or 15 lines, and the episode-like trials that Charlie goes through shows off some serious promise for Yelchin - even if many of his best scenes are so out of place they feel like a compilation of demo tapes. Downey Jr is immediately forgettable, as is the remainder of the cast.

Would make a great cheezy Hallmark movie or testament to some casting director who can notice Yelchin’s promise, depite being buried in such a terrible mess of a movie.