Charlie Bartlett (Yelchin) is not a popular student. When Charlie discovers that the kids who surround him - the outcast and the popular alike - are secretly in desperate need of something. Handing out the pills he’s prescribed from his own psychiatric sessions, he becomes an underground, under-aged, shrink who listens to the private confessions of his schoolmates. But when he falls in love with the beautiful and bold daughter (Dennings) of the school's increasingly disenchanted Principal (Downey, Jr.), Charlie’s world and fledgling psychiatric practice unravel and begins to discover there's a whole lot more to making a difference than handing out pills.