Me and Orson Welles is your
classic
coming-of-age-story/high-school-theater-
geek-wet-dream:
A precocious teenager is picked out of the crowd by his stage hero,
cast in a maverick play, and ushered into manhood by an enchanting
older woman. It’s the details that make it so much fun: the artist is
young Orson Welles (a mesmerizing Christian McKay), the enfant
terrible of the New York stage in 1937, and the play is his
modern-dress version of Julius Caesar (in Mussolini Blackshirt
costumes).
And the kid is Zac Efron. He’s supposed to be Richard Samuels, a
precocious (and fictional) Jersey high-school boy with a passion for
theater and music, but he’s less a hungry ’30s teen than a modern star
in period dress. And that works just fine for the part. Those sparkling
blue eyes suggest a kid dazzled by the lights and the glow of the great
Welles, magnificent monster of the stage: genius, tyrant, seductive
charmer, overflowing with ideas and ego, and eager for an adoring
audience not yet tired of his need for attention.
Cast on the strength of his one-man Orson Welles stage show, McKay
doesn’t just look like the baby-faced young director. He captures the
distinctive timbre that made him the busiest voice on radio, the
puckish smile that would melt across his face, the mercurial
personality that could flash into a rage then transition effortlessly
into a rousing speech to rally the troops. Richard’s story is eclipsed
whenever scene-stealer Welles is on-screen, due as much to an
underwritten role as to Efron’s engaging but weightless performance. We
never really know who Richard is, just that he’s had the ride of his
life. 
They had emo hair back then?
I’m thinking more Breck Girl than emo. I’ll wait for the DVD rental.
Is that pic of the Welles guy, or the high-school kid?
Please tell me that’s not a still from the movie.
Jesus Christ, Zack Efron is better groomed than I am.
But never fear, I believe this is a still from the movie.
Tell me this is a made for tv movie.
@5, It’s not that he isn’t well groomed, it’s that he looks way too modern, like a contemporary Ken doll.
Umm, what’s this movie about again?
That was one of the most pretentious, obnoxious books I have ever read. I cannot imagine the movie could be any easier to watch.
I really liked the book, though I picked it off the discount rack. My problems with the movie: the book guy is no pretty-boy, damnit. During the opening shot I kept praying the camera would not settle on the young-Christopher-Reeve lookalike. And the aging Girl Scout Claire Danes does not fit the worldly-wise seductress who sleeps with powerful men to get ahead. She’s more a spokeswoman for real California cheese.