Slow at times, but still insightful

Rating: 7/10 (5 February 2017)

This is by no means the definitive high school movie, but it is pretty good at hitting on some major aspects of it. The major conflicts of the movie stem from two universal truths about high school: 1. Having a social life is nice, and 2. Social life in high school is a tangled web of problems. Charlie wants to be accepted into the community that his new friends have provided him, but eventually things get in the way.
The movie's identity as a drama definitely lends it more credibility than most high school movies. Most of the best known high school movies (John Hughes' movies, Mean Girls, 10 Things I Hate About You, Easy A, 21 Jump Street) are comedies. While many of those are good and fun movies, their comedic identity tends to make their portrayal of high school life less realistic. Wallflower shows that everybody is insecure when they are a teenager and that there are a lot of things about being in high school that really suck, but that there is still hope for everyone to find and maintain true friends. In this way, I think it is good that Charlie's mental problems are not touched upon that much, because it makes the more universal themes of the movie stand out more.
The execution was nothing special at all, but I think it still deserves recognition. This was a human story, so there was no reason to have any fantastically crafted scenes or deep acting performances. The dialogue and the performances felt organic, that is they gave the sense that the characters were people like the ones sitting next to you. The movie's lack of Oscar nominations is warranted, but that does not take away from the fact that it was done well.
I did not actually enjoy the movie that much while I was watching it. But most of my issues with it were personal, and do not point to its true quality. For instance, I might have appreciated the ending more if I didn't already hate the tunnel song "Heroes". Also, the ending just felt a little clichéd and happy. The only two things that I think could have been done better were the script should have been paced faster and the director of photography could have done a better job at making the shots engaging instead of just static. Still, as I went back through it, I realized that there is a lot of good stuff in this movie. I particularly liked when Charlie said that his doctor's advice was not the ultimate answer, but was a good place to start. Also the line "we accept the love we think we deserve" has a lot of truth to it, even if it does sound trite.
I would recommend watching this movie in either 8th or 9th grade, but you should definitely see it before graduating high school. For parents, this is a borderline R movie, but it's probably more responsible to expose your young teenager to something like this before high school rather than try to shelter them. Loss of innocence is a dreadful thing, but it's not as bad as entering a world of social pressures without knowing a little about what's in it. For anyone well out of school, you might not enjoy this that much except to maybe reminisce about your own years in school. Overall Rating: 7.1/10.