The film focuses on a high school senior, Carson Philips (Colfer), who can’t wait to get out of the small town of Clover, population 9,525. At Clover High School, Carson is basically an outcast. With dreams of eventually working for The New Yorker, Carson thinks his achievements to date—being editor in chief of The Clover High Chronicle and president of The Writers’ Club—will help him get into Northwestern University, which will set him on the right path. His high school counselor (Angela Kinsey, of “Furry Vengeance”) is fairly useless, but Carson is used to adults letting him down. His parents always do.
Carson lives with his mother, the always-messed-up-on-something Sheryl (Allison Janney, of “A Thousand Words,” “The Oranges,” and “The Help”), and was abandoned by his father five years ago, when Neal (Dermot Mulroney, of “Big Miracle” and “The Grey”) left the family. Sheryl isn’t above telling her son she wishes she had an abortion, and Neal hasn’t called since moving out. Child support is sometimes late, even though Neal seems like a successful-enough real estate agent. And Carson’s only adult support, his grandmother (Polly Bergen), doesn’t recognize him anymore, even though he visits her every day at the assisted-living facility. It’s a tough life.
So Carson takes out his rage and frustration on his classmates, the overwhelming majority of whom fall into various forms of cliché. There’s cheerleader Claire (Sarah Hyland, of the TV show “Modern Family”); rich kid Dwayne (Matt Prokop, of “Furry Vengeance”); overachiever Remy (Allie Grant, of “The Runaways”); Goth girl Vicki (Ashley Rickards, of the TV show “Awkward.”), and a host of other high school “types.” Even Carson’s only friend, Malerie (Rebel Wilson, of “Bridesmaids,” “Bachelorette,” “What to Expect When You’re Expecting,” “Ice Age 4: Continental Drift,” and “Pitch Perfect”), who videotapes everything happening at school and plagiarizes classic literature for her short story submissions to the school newspaper, is depicted as a stereotype, overweight, aloof, and boy-crazy. Carson is cruel to pretty much all of them, ripping apart their ideas for prom and plans for after high school and calling them “future farmers and inmates”; even Malerie, unsure of his neglect of her, has to ask, “Carson, are we friends?”
And yet, as the narrative traces Carson’s life before his death—which is presented in the first two minutes of the film, and, of course, is why the movie is called “Struck by Lightning”—we’re supposed to sympathize and empathize with his plight. Stupid small town. Stupid classmates. Stupid parents. Everyone is to blame for Carson’s overwhelming negativity and cynicism, and he deserves all the goodness and greatness in the world. If only anyone could understand and appreciate him.
But the thing is, “Struck by Lightning” makes it extremely hard for viewers to see Carson as anything but entitled and combative, aggressive toward others for no reason at all. The film presents him as bullied and mocked, but for the most part, he’s the one poking at his classmates and starting fights with teachers and the principal, not the other way around. He only wants to use the newspaper and the Writers’ Club for his own ends, and has no interest in motivating other students or listening to what they have to say. No one is of any value but him. And, just logistically, it’s hard to believe that even in so small of a town, he couldn’t find even one confidante or friend.
Perhaps that’s being too hard on “Struck by Lightning,” but it’s difficult to praise anything in it when so much of the teen experience has been done before, and with such better results; last year’s “The Perks of Being a Wallflower,” for example, similarly tackled teen isolation, but was cohesive, inspiring, and emotionally affecting. But silly plot contrivances (Neal didn’t notice, for five years, that Sheryl hadn’t signed the divorce papers?) and uneven observations about the behavior of small-town America (when Sheryl tells Carson, “We found it easier to Roofie you than answer you,” what is that supposed to say about U.S. parents?) overshadow even the good things about “Struck by Lightning,” like Christina Hendricks’ (of “Drive” and “I Don’t Know How She Does It”) subtle, quietly solid performance as Neal’s pregnant fiancée. She just gets lost in the shuffle.
Ultimately, “Struck by Lightning” feels most like a vanity project for Colfer: Carson gets the best lines and throws around the wittiest insults, he gets to give a speech about how powerful writing is (“Don’t try to find the ideas. Let the ideas find you” is the kind of simplistic advice he gives), and he’s a martyr for truth. Colfer flirts with the idea of providing other characters with enough development to break out of their stereotypes, but then abandons it. “Struck by Lightning” is all about him, and that insularity plagues it.
