Me and Orson Welles

Directed by Richard Linklater

(PG-13)

***

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A young Orson Welles makes his Broadway debut.

Me and Orson Welles is a film of “great spirit and considerable charm,” said David Denby in The New Yorker. Director Richard Linklater—the same filmmaker who brought us School of Rock and Dazed and Confused—makes his “first foray into the classics” with this coming-of-age story set against the backdrop of Orson Welles’ legendary 1937 stage production of Julius Caesar. The plot is “conventionally conceived,” but Linklater wisely focuses on Welles himself and the early days of the theater troupe he founded with John Houseman. England’s Christian McKay portrays Welles, who was just 22 when he made his acting and directing debut on Broadway, and Zac Efron plays a 17-year-old who bluffs his way into the Mercury Theatre company. Efron gives a likable yet lackluster performance, said Nathan Rabin in The Onion. The film is at its best when McKay “takes center stage.” As Welles, he is as “blustery, over-the-top, and wildly theatrical” as the real man. McKay commands our attention just as Welles commands his soon-to-be-famous players, said Peter Travers in Rolling Stone. Not only has Linklater given us a snapshot of a young genius but also a “thrilling movie about, of all things, the theater.”