Since The Bucket List, Rob Reiner’s last bona-fide purely Hollywood venture to date, the director seems to be branching out of his comfort zone of delivering the type of studio fare which, for the most part, has oftentimes delighted both critics and audiences. In the last few years, Reiner has poignantly revisited childhood with the charming Flipped and gone elegiac with the lovely Morgan Freeman-starrer The Magic of Belle Isle. The director’s ode to middle-aged romance with the Michael Douglas/Diane Keaton romantic comedy And So It Goes was a situation that, although it didn’t work, showed a growing desire on Reiner’s part to tell the kinds of stories most major studios wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole. Adding to this list is his latest, the addiction drama Being Charlie, which is perhaps the Oscar-nominated director’s most adventurous and least studio-friendly film of his career.
Being Charlie is all about the title character, an 18-year old named Charlie Mills (Nick Robinson), a young man from a well-to-do family who, after repeatedly failing to stay sober following one rehab stint after another, is sent away to one final treatment facility by his father David (Cary Elwes). David wants his son to get better, but also wants him out of the way as he seeks the Governor’s seat in California. While there, Charlie ponders for the first time what a life of sobriety would truly mean.
Ostensibly, Being Charlie is an indie film, but an indie film made with a studio feel. This all comes from the hand of Reiner, who carries with him a sort of shiny cinematic gloss which he infuses into all of his films, regardless of the budget or subject matter. As a result, Being Charlie makes for an interesting mix – a pretty looking film about sad people. While the film once in a while has the feel of a TV movie, its director saves it from ever becoming maudlin. Being Charlie has so many of those real moments that Reiner has always been so good at: those moments with characters catching themselves off-guard and revealing those sides to themselves they’ve so often kept hidden. When a key character in the film goes from laughing and joking, thinking he’s got life pretty much pegged one moment, to unleashing a well of bottled up emotions with such a natural and delicate flow, we know it is Reiner’s skilled hand and his utmost respect for the subject that is responsible for the entire moment.
Another reason Reiner is able to make Being Charlie work to the point that it does is because he has managed to include the aspects of recovery that lend great authenticity in establishing the kind of world Charlie, and those like him, find themselves in. The film does a good job to show the camaraderie that exists between those striving for sobriety and the coping mechanisms needed to make it through; in Charlie’s case, a knack for comedy. Reiner also illustrates the various rude awakenings which populate that world, such as the false safety of co-dependent relationships and the dangerous act of falling in love with another person in recovery; the ultimate lesson Charlie must learn is that recovery needs to be achieved for oneself.
Robinson, Elwes, and all the supporting players do right by the material, and Reiner is able to bring forth some solid work from everyone involved. The real surprise of the film ends up being Common as Charlie’s rehab counselor (who in a single scene powerfully spells out the the sheer difficulty of getting and staying sober) and Devon Bostick as Adam, Charlie’s best friend who reveals more to the character in his delivery of lines than was perhaps intended.
There were a few wishes I had after the end of Being Charlie. I wish that we could have spent more personal time with Charlie’s family, enough to see them as more than just prominent Los Angelinos trying, for the most part, to keep up a united front, both publicly and privately. I also wish that we could have spent more time with Charlie and his past, tracing what it was that led him to the place we first encounter him at. The script for Being Charlie was written by the director’s son Nick, no doubt inspired by his own battles with addiction. With that fact in mind, Being Charlie feels just like the kind of film you would expect Reiner to make – a human story with the right amount of pathos and a first-hand understanding of the world described on the page and the people within it.
Being Charlie is now available on Blu-ray and DVD from Anchor Bay Home Entertainment.
Get it at Amazon:
Being Charlie – [Blu-ray] | [DVD] | [Instant]
