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"Orson wants to stay with me tonight."
"He wants to stay with you?"
"I'm in no position to refuse."

Screened at the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival

At first glance, Me & Orson Welles is like a million other well-intentioned, not entirely successful prestige pictures vying for attention at Toronto and elsewhere. There's little about it with the potential to outrage or even surprise anyone. But when considered in the context of director Richard Linklater's career, it's jarring -- almost revolting. Because though Me & Orson Welles is nice and smart and unobjectionable, it's the least exciting, least vibrant movie Linklater has ever made.

I say this, obviously, as a great admirer of Linklater's work; a fan. There's no shortage of people to swear by his "cult" films -- early works like Dazed and Confused, Slacker and Before Sunrise -- but I'm a defender of his mainstream efforts, which perennially get short shrift. Movies like School of Rock and The Bad News Bears, while not exactly groundbreaking or intellectually ambitious, have a reckless energy that takes real talent to generate. They're infectious and alive even as they execute familiar formulas. We may know where these films are going, but Linklater makes them feel like anything can happen.

Me & Orson Welles, though mainstream enough, is nothing like that. It holds back. It's staid and awkward. The story of an ambitious teenager who is accidentally hired by Orson Welles to play the part of Lucius in his Broadway production of Julius Caesar, it's meant to be a rumination on being young and talented with the world your oyster; a fairy tale about finding success without betraying yourself or others. Watching it, you can see the movie it's supposed to be: funny, giddy, wide-eyed with wonder. But somehow it just sits there, dead-eyed.

One of the problems is Zac Efron, the Disney Channel heartthrob who plays the titular "Me" -- Richard, an easygoing, good-looking teenager who gets his break of a lifetime after telling Welles what he wanted to hear. If you have kids, you know Efron from High School Musical and its sequel; if you don't, you may remember him from Hairspray. He is built for those movies, where he can sing, dance, ham it up, and hold the screen by himself in his big scenes. In a film like Me & Orson Welles, he's a liability. He's never truly in a scene with someone; he doesn't really connect or interact. If he delivers a line in close-up, you can virtually hear Linklater saying "action" and then "cut." The conceit of Me & Orson Welles is that we observe Welles and his theatrical circus through Richard's eyes, but Efron renders that perspective dull and sterile. He's no fun to watch; his journey of discovery is boring.

He's also part of the reason the film never develops any real comic momentum. There's no gleam in Efron's eye, and he can't sell the comedy. Lines that should have been killer (Love interest to Richard: "What do you have to offer?" Response: "Wealth, travel, fame. I can take you to movies that have all that.") land with a thud. He's not a good foil for the flamboyant Welles, either, because he doesn't seem to absorb anything. He just stands there.

Welles is played by Christian McKay, a very funny newcomer who does a pretty good impression of the man. The film and McKay's performance are both effective in making Welles ambiguous: he's obviously an arrogant, tyrannical maniac, as well as (the movie asserts) a genius, but is that all he is, or is there kindness and genuine concern hiding behind his artistic persona? Me & Orson Welles makes both possibilities plausible before tipping its hand in the third act. That revelation, and its effect on Richard, is one of the few elements in the film that fully works.

Me & Orson Welles is kind of sweet, in the end, and a little heartwarming; it's always watchable. But "kind of sweet" and "watchable" isn't what I've come to expect from this filmmaker. The curse of good work and high expectations, I suppose.

--Eugene Novikov