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| Ten points for Gryffindor. |
The Perks of Being a Wallflower will resonate with anyone who remembers feeling like an outsider in high school, which as one eventually discovers, is pretty much everyone. It's a well-crafted, capsule of nostalgia focused around an incredibly dull, yet invariably scarred, loner named Charlie who finds himself befriended by an intriguing band of misfit youths.
The film manages to capture the mood of youthful insecurity and the transitory sense of entering and leaving high school, all the while reminding us, perhaps a little too often, of the ignorance inherent in children's ploys at maturity. Charlie seems to be the only real wallflower of the bunch; he acts as narrator, and would be a completely vapid character if not for a tragic past and a crush on Hermione Granger.
It is the friends Charlie makes that drive the plot. Sam (Emma Watson) and Patrick (Ezra Miller) are step-siblings whom, after the realization that Charlie has no real friends, adopt him as their own. Charlie seems to contribute little to this friendship, apart from being a virginal target for corruption and a fresh face to talk to. I suppose that's more than most friendships are based on, but I think I harbored a small grudge for Charlie's uninteresting personality. I mean, sure he reads books, but he's not that cool. And he has a stupid trapper keeper.
