THE PERKS OF BEING A WALLFLOWER: formulaic yet fresh and funny

High School can be a hellish experience if you're not one of the in-crowd.
And, cinematically speaking, John Hughes wrote the book on that subject in the 1980s with 'The Breakfast Club' and 'Pretty in Pink.'
'Heathers' and 'Mean Girls' were notable subsequent additions to the canon, but there have also been dozens of other - lesser - efforts on the same general theme resulting in a pretty crowded field.

It will therefore take a singular creative talent to find something new to say on the topic and THE PERKS OF BEING A WALLFLOWER writer-director David Chbosky is not that man. But he's done the next best thing. With this big screen adaptation of his own novel he's created a story that is warm and engaging and peopled by characters we can believe in, even as they adhere closely to the stereotypes so often found in this particular vein of coming-of-age stories.
There's Charlie (Logan Lerman), the titular wallflower, anxiously counting down the days until he can graduate and escape the waking nightmare that is high school. He's definitely not a jock but neither is he a nerd. Charlie exists in that nebulous space between the two extremes where a reasonably enjoyable school experience is possible for sociable types, but he isn't. Charlie's not anti-social but there's something preventing him from developing regular friendships, so when he spots an opening with an older student who's as much of an outsider as he is he grasps it with the fervor of a drowning man thrown a lifebelt.
Patrick (Ezra Miller) is the consummate high school outsider. Loudly and proudly gay he has no time for school rules or peer pressure, but - of course - that outward display of confidence masks troubling inner turmoil.
Patrick's best friend Sam (Emily Watson) is similarly conflicted. Charlie finds himself immediately drawn to her but has no clue how to express his true feelings. He can only watch helplessly as she invests her emotions in men he knows are no good for her.
The pressures on and within all three build to the inevitable explosive release and - in one  case - the disturbing exposure of a long repressed secret.
Although Watson is the star name, we watch events unfold from Charlie's point of view, and director Chbosky's careful to give all three characters equal weight. Charlie, Sam and Patrick are indispensable to each other and to the effective telling of the story. Relegate any one of them to a supporting role and it just doesn't work.

And while Watson proves there's so much more to her than just Hermione Granger, it's Lerman and Miller that are the real revelations. Both actors have been around for the best part of decade but have not yet attained real name or face recognition.Their performances in THE PERKS OF BEING A WALLFLOWER will change that. Miller succeeds in making Patrick a credible, three-dimensional character despite hewing pretty closely to the checklist of traits required cinematically of a gay high school teenager. Lerman's success, meanwhile, is in making Charlie a believable young man without resort to any of the cinematic stereotypes. He's not weird, goofy, strangely dressed, obsessed with computers or some other nerdy hobby, or from a single parent household. He even subverts the cliche of the beautiful girl's asexual best friend.
In addition to the performances I also very much appreciated the setting. The film's not explicit about the timeframe (and the soundtrack doesn't help as most of the songs are not contemporary) but it's most likely the early 1990s, a period that was still largely pre-internet and pre-cell phones. The absence of this technology meant people still had to interact on a face to face basis. Charlie can't use emails and text messages to express to Sam the feelings that he's too shy to tell her in person. Vinyl records, paper based books and cassette-recorded mixtapes are all integral parts of their world along with hanging out in person. It's a window on a forgotten world that will generate a warm glow of nostalgia (and perhaps embarrassment too) in viewers of a certain age.
Charming, engaging, funny and heartbreaking, THE PERKS OF BEING A WALLFLOWER is one of those rare works of fiction that feels like a true story. And it's definitely one of my favourite films of 2012.