Product Description
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Based on the best-selling novel by Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of
Being a Wallflower is a modern classic that captures the dizzying
highs and crushing lows of growing up. Starring Logan Lerman,
Emma Watson and Ezra Miller, The Perks of Being a Wallflower is a
moving tale of love, loss, fear and hope and the unforgettable
friends that help us through life.
Bonus Features:
* Audio Commentaries with writer/director Stephen Chbosky and
Cast
* "Best Summer Ever" featurette
* Deleted Scenes with audio commentary by Stephen Chbosky
* Dailies
* Theatrical Trailer
Review
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The Perks of Being a Wallflower maintains the fine tradition of
movies like Running with Scissors and Nick and Norah's Infinite
Playlist in its savvy, sensitive telling of high schoolers coming
of age and coming to terms. Though it enters some dark emotional
territory as freshman Charlie (Logan Lerman) connects with a
clique of older students, the smart sense of humor threaded
throughout is as charming as the heavy stuff is powerful. Charlie
enters high school with some serious yet indeterminate
psychological problems that have clearly devilled him since
childhood. We don't get to know about the extent of his
difficulties until the movie's final scenes, but they've made it
hard for him to find friends. A device that comes and goes is
Charlie's voice-over of letters he's writing to an unknown and
unnamed friend that describe the hard shell he's kept closed
around himself. It all starts to change for Charlie--mostly for
the better--when he hooks up with the eccentric, iconoclastic
senior Patrick (Ezra Miller) and his popular step-sister Sam
(Emma Watson). The energetic duo bring Charlie into their fold of
friends and introduce him to a world outside himself that is
probably exactly what he wanted, even though it's a place of
loyalty, trust, and understanding that had previously been
unimaginable in the small confines of his tortured head space. As
with all friendships, there are rivalries, boundaries, rifts, and
betrayals that ebb and flow as the school year unfolds. Charlie's
inevitable breakdown and the healing that he experiences from
having been exposed to such acceptance comes full circle in a
neat little package at the end. But there's plenty of honesty,
wit, and genuinely moving emotion expressed along the way. All
the young actors commit fully to their well-drawn parts,
especially the three leads. This may be the post-Potter role that
breaks Watson free to revel in her talent, and Miller is a
natural as a grown-up teenager who may have most of it figured
out, even though the internal confusion he's tried so hard to
bury still rears its head now and again. Set in the early '90s,
the movie is tinged with peripheral period details that never
overpower or insert themselves awkwardly into the action. Music
is a big part of the characters' lives and is equally so in the
spirit of the story. The writer-director is Stephen Chbosky, who
adapted his own semiautobiographical young adult novel. He does
right by his audience in presenting a movie that's fully adult
and gets the little things right for anyone who is or ever was an
angsty teenager embroiled in that horrible/wonderful search for
self. --Ted Fry