No, they didn’t screw it up.
The day it was announced there was to be a film adaptation of the young adult novel “The Perks of Being A Wallflower,” the kvetching started almost immediately. “OMG! They’re gonna TOTALLY mess it up!…It’s too perfect to spoil with a movie… ad infinitum. “ Everyone can exhale. The film version of every angsty millennial’s favorite book is flat out wonderful and—mark my words—will become an adolescent film classic in the same vein as “The Breakfast Club” and “Pretty In Pink.”
Full credit for the success must go to Stephen Chbosky, who directed and wrote the film from his own novel. Authors usually make horrible film directors (anyone volunteering to sit through Stephen King’s “Maximum Overdrive” again?) but Chbosky has brilliantly recreated his story and characters onscreen with nary a hiccup. Dare I say it, this is the most faithful adaptation of a novel since Coppolla’s “The Outsiders” way back in ’83.
Island of misfit toys
Plotwise, “Perks” is “The Wonder Years” on Prozac. Shy, ultrasensitive, clinically depressed Charlie (played beautifully by Logan Lerman) is struggling to make friends in his freshman year of high school and meets two fellow outcasts with equally unquiet minds and dark secrets—the mixtape-loving, manic pixie dream girl-like Sam (Emma Watson of “Harry Potter” fame) and the closeted gay Patrick (Ezra Miller from “We Need To Talk About Kevin”). Charlie is welcomed into their Island of Misfit Toys, as Sam calls their clique, and experiences a tumultuous year of firsts—first kiss, first trip to second base, first trip to “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” first dalliance with drugs, etc.
While there have been plenty of coming-of-age stories in both book and film format, “The Perks of Being A Wallflower” contains a poignancy and an authenticity that strikes a rarely played chord with young people, no matter how “popular” they are/were with their peers. Every person under 40 who has read the book probably has a story about how they came to read it because it’s usually a seminal event in their lives. Eleven years ago I had just started dating a young woman who told me in a slightly bemused tone, “You remind me a lot of the kid in this book I’m reading.” She loaned me the book soon after and I saw what she meant. Charlie and I were both wannabe writers, sharing a mutual love of The Smiths, “Rocky Horror,” William Burroughs novels, girls who appreciated mixtapes and both of us were way too sensitive for our own good. Like Holden Caulfield of “The Catcher in the Rye” fame, Charlie has become one of those literary characters who has become a good friend to many a young person who doesn’t fit in, sometimes not even with the so-called “weird” crowd (which, in the age of Hot Topic and tattoos/piercing going mainstream, really isn’t that weird anymore).
Literary therapy
That’s why so many people talk in hushed, revered tones about “The Perks of Being A Wallflower.” This isn’t just a book or a film—it’s therapy for anyone who emerged from adolescence a little worse for the wear…which, frankly, is just about all of us. While American pop culture has become almost entirely built upon nostalgia, whether it’s Seth McFarlane’s ironic skewering of Gen-X culture or the constant repackaging of our misspent Day-Glo youth (“I Love The ‘80s,” anyone?), let’s be honest—chances are your adolescence sucked, even if you were one of the popular kids.
If you’re a Gen-Xer or in the first few rows of Generation Y, watching the film of “The Perks of Being A Wallflower” will feel like reading your senior yearbook and coming to the picture of your one-time best friend who you now only talk to on Facebook. It’s definitely a film flavored with melancholia and a drop of sorrow but it’s a beautiful kind of sadness. I spent much of this film with tears in my eyes but I was smiling all the way through and at the end I definitely felt, like Charlie, Sam and Patrick…infinite. And you will, too.
'Perks' is in theaters now