The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Expectations:
If it is possible to be sold on a movie solely because of the song in the trailer, that's what happened for me and The Perks of Being a Wallflower. Imagine Dragon's "It's Time" was one of my favorite songs of the summer, and I was introduced to it by the trailer for this film. (here it is if you haven't heard) Not only did I love this song, but I also downloaded like five more of Imagine Dragon's songs, as they joined Fun. and The Lumineers among my favorites in music from the summer of 2012. And, yes, you did here correctly... I have great taste in music! However, we are here to talk about movies, and I must say that I was moderately excited about seeing Wallflower. Because I live in a small movie market, it took a good while for the film to make its way to my local theater, but I think the wait just increased my desire to watch. Also, my wonderfully sweet girlfriend preferred Wallflower over Cloud Atlas, and it would be wrong to displease her...

Plot:
The plot of Wallflower can be boiled down fairly easily. However, for a simplistic story, there was a TON of depth. There is even a nice twist at the end that I did not see coming at all, which added even more to the depth. Being a book-adaption movie, there is a tendency to wonder whether the story was told as effectively as it was told in the book. Luckily for us, we don't have to even think about this, because the author of the book wrote and directed the film. To all of you "the book's always better" people, you can't criticize this movie in any way. If you want to criticize the author for telling HIS story, then you should be forced to never speak about books or film ever again! Nonetheless, this story was absolutely brilliant, and its execution was flawless. Not only was I interested in the outcome of the story, but I was also totally drawn in to these characters' lives...

Characters:
As I have said many, many times, I am a sucker for young actors. I love kid actors, because of their innocence, and I love actors that are my age (20's), because I can easily relate to them. Why was 50/50 my favorite movie of 2011?... Probably because I could imagine myself in that situation, and it just felt so real. Or in the case of Wallflower, I felt "infinite!" (You'll get it after you watch.)

Negatives:
Although I am a huge American Horror Story fan, which makes this difficult to say, I was not a huge fan of Dylan McDermott in the role of the father of the main character (Charlie). Maybe it's because of American Horror Story or because that's how the character is supposed to be, but I just didn't feel like McDermott's character had a very fatherly feel about him. The only other performance that I didn't care for was Johnny Simmons's Brad, who was the star quarterback at the kids high school. His character becomes hugely important, but I just didn't think his performance was that great, compared to the other, young actors.

Positives:
Where do I begin? How about I start with one of the greatest performances of 2012? Ezra Miller was absolutely amazing as Patrick (the obviously gay friend of Charlie). I'm usually not a huge fan of leading gay characters, because they usually either start off or end up as this huge gay rights social protest. It's not that I have a problem with characters being gay, but I don't pay $8 to watch someone be gay, just because Hollywood loves it. Patrick, on the other hand, was a completely unique character who stole the show, not by being gay, but by being the guy that ANYBODY would love to hang out with. Kudos to Miller for his great performance, and kudos to creator Stephen Chbosky for creating such a character. As great as Miller was, the awesomeness did not stop there. I don't know how Logan Lerman acts in real life, but he did a brilliant job of portraying the troubled lead character, Charlie. Miller may have stolen the show, but Lerman is the one who created the show and gave it the ability to be stolen. Also, give credit to Paul Rudd, who played the coolest English teacher ever.

Conclusion:
Even though I wasn't particularly stoked about seeing The Perks of Being a Wallflower, I can easily say that it was one of my favorite movies of 2012, thus far. The story was great. The acting was great. It just made me feel great. In my opinion, you can tell how good a movie is by how much you think about it the day AFTER you watch it. I was thinking about Wallflower for many days after I watched, and I still can't get the song "Come On Eileen" out of my head because of it. My hope is that each and every person who reads this post will watch this movie when it comes out on DVD. I guarantee that you will not be disappointed (especially if you are my age). I give The Perks of Being a Wallflower 4.02 out of 5 stars.