The trailer to Charlie Bartlett may be one of the best of the year. Unfortunately, as is increasingly the case, the people in post-production wield a mightier sword than do directors. What's left over from the trailer—the part they've taken to calling the movie—is little more than a high school romp with a semi-interesting premise and an uneven tone.

Anton Yelchin plays the title character, a troubled rich kid who's always concocting weird enterprises that get him kicked out of every prep school imaginable. In an especially familiar scene, Charlie's mother picks him up from the latest school to give him the boot (substitute rehab facility or mental institution) and tells him he'll have to start a new life—in public school.

Yes, public school—that practically real-life drama where plebe kids prowl the halls like wild animals and the principal is so harried his only recourse is to hit the bottle and toy with taking his own life. Charlie finds an odd but successful means of survival in dispensing psychiatric advice and medication to his tormented peers from a confessional-like bathroom stall. Don't kids resort to petty crime as a means to combat boredom anymore?

Public school never has a natural texture in movies of this variety, but here it feels especially awkward. The kids hang out in a big shack called the student lounge. Charlie rides the short bus to school every morning because, apparently, that's the easiest punchline. It's not so much that the movie is unbelievable—we get it, it's a movie—it's that Charlie's world doesn't really make any sense. His family has one psychiatrist on-call who dispenses the drugs with ease, but in a sudden turn he's seeing half a dozen shrinks to stock up on pills.

Still, the movie isn't without its charms. Chief among them is Kat Dennings' (The 40 Year Old Virgin) effortless, perfectly natural turn as Charlie's love interest. Hope Davis also makes for a good time, playing Charlie's Chardonnay and Klonopin-mixing mommy. And though Robert Downey, Jr., is underused as the boozy principal, it's still always nice to have him around. But, really, it's Yelchin's movie to carry, and he can't quite manage the burden.

At points, the film has Wes Anderson's upper-class oddities and Election's sharp satirical tone; at other times, it's trying to be a touching John Hughes movie. Like many a high school kid, Charlie Bartlett just isn't sure what it is or what it wants to be. But there's some worthy if misguided talent here. Charlie, sweetie, call us when you get to college.