High school seems to be a difficult subject to capture on film. If it isn't depicted as all sunshines and rainbows like a Disney channel movie, then it's shown as a depressing time from beginning to end. Neither I feel are accurate as high school is a time of many stressful and positive moments. One of the rare movies to get it 100% right is The Perks of Being A Wallflower, one of the best movies of 2012.
Perks stars Logan Lerman as Charlie, a shy, social outcast starting off high school with no friends and a bad tendency to turn off his brain before acting in a stressful situation. He's completely alone until he meets Patrick and Sam (Ezra Miller & Emma Watson from Harry Potter) two seniors that will drastically change Charlie's life for the better.
Every performance in Perks is top notch. Lerman is sympathetic and charismatic as Charlie and Watson is downright loveable as his love interest Sam. The most noteworthy performance comes from Ezra Miller as Charlie though. He steals every scene that he's in and transforms this role from a character in a movie to an actual human being, quite the rare accomplishment in a teenage comedy.
The screenplay is brilliant as well. Unlike a lot of movies these days, the script actually feels a lot like something you would hear real people saying. Authentic is certainly an adjective I would use to describe the overall tone and direction of Perks, a movie that manages to balance the great and shitty moments that life brings especially in youth. Perks is a stellar movie for those who want the realism of life mixed in with the magic of what a great movie can provide.
4/4
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