The Perks of Being a Wallflower Reviews
The Ooh Tray
What exactly are the perks of being a wallflower? Chbosky's as short on answers as he is on vowels.
OK! Magazine
The greatest perk of being a real Wallflower is that at least you don't get stuck watching a movie about one.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
amNewYork
Writer-director Stephen Chbosky's adaptation of his novel is so infused with honey-glazed recollections of suburban Pittsburgh in the early '90s that it suffocates.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
Guardian [UK]
A whooping, leaping carnival of shouting about your difference in the faces of all those jocks and squares who never even heard of Sonic Youth.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
Top CriticChbosky plays this CW serial stuff for maximum earnestness, stressing the teenage tendency to assume that every new thing they're feeling is unprecedented in human history, keeping the tone just-moist-eyed throughout.
At the Movies (Australia)
Something's missing in this film. It just feels constructed and flat. And I found the casting uninspired as well.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/5
Heartfelt but rather generic.
Blu-ray.com
A muddled creation blessed with unique emotional sincerity, yet cursed with loose ends and poorly defined characters, huddled into a precious creation that might test the patience of those with a sensitivity to effusive teen melodrama.
Full Review
| Original Score: C
Antagony & Ecstasy
Boasts one of 2012's best live-wire performances in the form of Ezra Miller's exuberantly gay high school senior.
Full Review
| Original Score: 6/10
Combustible Celluloid
Has some nice touches and makes nice use of the passing seasons, but can't ever manage to tap into the universal center of the story.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
Little White Lies
Seek out the infinitely superior The Myth of the American Sleepover for an original and moving take on similar material.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
Ozus' World Movie Reviews
Rings inauthentic throughout.
Full Review
| Original Score: C
It's all frightfully familiar - as if teens sitting around the campfire need to be told the same story every night - until the last 15 mins., when this Cocoa Puffs movie reveals an underlayer of arsenic.
Slant Magazine
A risible, somewhat revolting piece of pop martyrdom, made for and isolated to the damaged middle class.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1/4
Verbal play and smartass-ery weaves through Wallflower, but it's of the predictable variety rather than the wryly observant commentary we'd hope for, like when a bored teen drawls: "That works on so many levels."
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
The Age (Australia)
Even making allowances for a certain amount of Hollywood gloss, there's something wrong with a film about misfits where everyone is this good-looking and poised.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1.5/5
Austin Chronicle
The Perks of Being a Wallflower. Ripe dramatic material, but Chbosky surrounds his hurting characters with the cinematic equivalent of a hug circle -- which is sweet, but rather antithetical to tension-building.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/5
You can feel Chbosky's blood, sweat and tears oozing out of this highly personal project, but that holy trinity of fluids isn't enough to wash away the sense that you've seen this before-many, many, many times.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
It's populated by characters who are just too good to be plausible.
Television Without Pity
There's a lot to like about The Perks of Being a Wallflower, but Chbosky has some growing up to do before he steps behind the camera again.
