As a high school movie, Charlie Bartlett is not all that unfamiliar—semi-outcast becomes semi-popular, guy gets the girl, bully makes nice, students rebel, authority fights back, and everybody learns something. Much of it is recognizable, and many parts of it we have seen before. But the thing about Charlie Bartlett is that it’s not just a high school movie. In fact, with its main character doling out prescription medications and holding counseling sessions in the boys’ bathroom, the story actually becomes quite a quirky and engaging look into the realities of our own mental health, the ways we try to manage it, the common issues that are often a part of it, and the relationships that play such an important part of whether we get through those issues or not.

As soon as the movie opens, we meet both its hero and one of our most common struggles head on. All around, crowds shout out, “Charlie! Charlie!” The shouts continue, and then on stage steps Charlie Bartlett (Anton Yelchin). “Thank you. Thank you,” he says. “It’s great to see you all here.” The crowd cheers, another voice calls his name and tells him that his mom is waiting in the dean’s office, and just as quickly as it started, Charlie’s fantasy fades away.

We soon find out that Charlie has been expelled from his private school for making fake IDs for his fellow students. “I just can’t fathom why you did it,” his mother (Hope Davis) says. “They were just starting to appreciate me,” says Charlie. And less than ten minutes into the movie, we see that even though Charlie will become a unique character in the story to follow, at the bottom of it all, he is just like the rest of us—looking for place, looking for purpose, and looking to be recognized as a valuable part of the crowded world he lives in.

Skip to Charlie’s first day at his nearby public high school. Begin a new reality where Charlie is called professor, laughed out of theater auditions, and beat up by the school bully (Tyler Hilton). Enter the Bartletts’ on-call psychiatrist and an ill-advised prescription for Ritalin. Jump to Charlie’s decision that his most promising avenue for finding a place in his new school is to set up shop as its resident shrink and psychiatric pharmacist. And from there, the movie takes off.

Almost as soon as Charlie gets the idea, Charlie’s popularity goes through the roof. Part of it is the magic escape of the drugs he has to offer. But as students come to him everyday just to share their problems and seek his wisdom, the reason for their visits speaks to another truth even more. When it comes to finding our place in this world, knowing that we have something to offer is just half of the puzzle. The rest of it? Actually getting past the issues and faults that make us think we have nothing to offer. And as Charlie takes the time to listen to students who no one has listened to before, he shows us all that no matter what we have to do to get past those issues, we are worth it.

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