Review of The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012) by Psunshine87 — 13 Oct 2012

"And in this moment I swear, we are infinite.".

Charlie (Lerman) is a wallflower. About to start his first day of high school he begins writing letters to an unknown "friend," unleashing his fears and worries, most of which can be summed up with the revelation that the only people he's spoken to all summer are his family. In addition to being a wallflower, Charlie is also a person with no friends. That all changes when Charlie meets two seniors, Patrick (Miller) and Sam (Watson), who invite him into their group of friends. Each member, like Charlie, is eccentric and has their own slew of issues, with The Perks of Being a Wallflower detailing the way in which they come to deal with at least some of them.

Perks is so much more than your typical coming of age drama or teen romance. It's a dark film, based on a dark book, and nicely handles the many themes present within it. I don't really want to go into the details too much, because I think if I did I would risk spoiling the movie, but I will say that while Perks deals with typical high school issues - school, fitting in, first love, etc - it also deals with much more adult issues - death and abuse being the big ones. Each of the younger characters is struggling to figure themselves out, be they a major character or a more minor one. At first it's a bit hard to realize this, that even the "popular" kids - portrayed primarily through Charlie's elder sister, Candace (Nina Dobrev), and football player Brad (Johnny Simmons) - are struggling to figure themselves out, but by the end of the movie it's clear that they're all in the same position, even if they haven't all been through the same things.

The thing that really makes this movie great, however, is the acting in itself. There's kind of two divisions in this movie; the group that gets more focus and the group that is more sidelined - this can also be seen as Charlie's friends versus Charlie's family. Lerman portrays his role absolutely perfectly.