Charlie is a troublesome 18-year-old who breaks out of a youth drug treatment clinic, but when he returns home to Los Angeles, he’s given an intervention by his parents and forced to go to an adult rehab. There, he meets a beautiful but troubled girl, Eva, and is forced to battle with drugs, elusive love and divided parents.
Movie reviews:
The result is a film so personal you watch transfixed, caught up in a life that is constantly enthralling, with a universal appeal that extends beyond the exclusive Hills of Beverly.
Being Charlie may not be the definitive cinematic portrait of addiction, but it’s the first Rob Reiner movie since “The American President” to palpably convey what it feels like to be anybody.
Being Charlie is Rob Reiner’s best film in at least two decades — admittedly a low bar to clear, given the competition (which includes such forgotten piffle as Alex & Emma and Rumor Has It…), but even a modest Meathead comeback is more than welcome.
Many a road to movie hell is paved with good intentions. To that list of lost causes add Being Charlie, a well-meaning study of addiction that hits too many banal beats to snap us to attention.
But being Charlie – what’s going on inside this angry kid’s head, what made him turn to drugs, and finally turn away – that is more elusive. And that is the film’s great disappointment: that something so clearly conceived in earnestness and from real-life
The movie’s refusal to abandon commercial formulas and examine its characters’ inner lives suggests that the director’s years inside the Hollywood bubble may have prevented him from recognizing the degree to which independent films and television are alre
Most of the film’s characters are unconvincing, flattened out by Charlie’s self-focused lens.
