If someone asks you to see 'Charlie Bartlett,' just say no, no, no

The dismal high school comedy "Charlie Bartlett" has the look, feel and sentiment of a made-for-video cheapie that might have been grudgingly whipped together by Robert Downey Jr. as some sort of court-ordered community service project for his many drug busts.

Downey plays a watery-eyed, alcoholic high school principal who has been ravaged by his personal problems and several addictions, and at the climactic moment in the movie gets to deliver a lecture about the evils of drugs.

But, though he's the biggest-name actor in the movie, he's not the star. That honor falls to Anton Yelchin, who plays Downey's nemesis and the title character: a scrawny, spoiled rich kid who comes to the school and gradually seizes power from the principal.

He accomplishes this by drugging just about the entire student body -- even the star quarterback and the cheerleaders -- via a virtual pharmacy he's acquired from the various psychiatrists who have been employed by his nutty mom (Hope Davis) to treat him.

It's supposed to be hilarious in an edgy, adolescent way, but it comes off as being distasteful and bizarre, and it's fatally handicapped by the fact that Yelchin (the kid co-star of Anthony Hopkins in 2001's "Hearts in Atlantis") has no particular Ferris Bueller charisma.

Charlie, of course, learns the error of his ways but when his transformation comes, the film's anti-drug message is so flimsy, insincere and tacked-on that it virtually doesn't exist. (The subliminal message here is that drugs are nothing but fun.)

Director Jon Poll is a former film editor but his film doesn't hold together well at all. Gustin Nash's script has a few clever moments but mostly just radiates stupidity. Thankfully, the film is rated R, which should theoretically bar it from most of its intended high school audience.