Enlarge By Liam Daniel, AP Shall we dance? Zac Efron and Claire Danes take a turn on the dance floor in the period drama Me and Orson Welles. ABOUT THE MOVIE ABOUT THE MOVIE Me and Orson Welles 
 
 * * 1/2 (out of four) Stars:Zac Efron, Christian McKay, Claire Danes, Ben Chaplin, Zoe Kazan, Eddie Marsan 
 
 Director:Richard Linklater 
 
 Distributor: Freestyle Releasing 
 
 Rating: PG-13 for sexual references and smoking 
 
 Running time: 1 hour, 54 minutes 
 
 Opens Wednesday in select cities Me and Orson Welles would be a much better movie if the first part of the title were excised, or at least scaled back. Awkward syntax aside,would be a much better movie if the first part of the title were excised, or at least scaled back. The story pertaining to Orson Welles (terrifically played by Christian McKay) is far more compelling than what happens to the young guy who gets unexpectedly swept up in Welles' brilliant circle. Had the movie, which is set in 1937, centered more on Welles and his seminal production of Julius Caesar, it would have been fascinating. But as a theatrical coming-of-age story, it's slight, only sporadically enjoyable and sometimes corny. McKay's performance is a revelation. He nails Welles' imperiousness, charm and vocal cadences, and even bears a strong resemblance to the iconic actor/director. He is thoroughly convincing as Welles and electrifies the screen when he's on it The Me in the title refers to a teenage aspiring actor named Richard, played by Zac Efron. Unfortunately, too much time is spent with Efron, a likable but lackluster presence. By a stroke of luck, 17-year-old Richard wins a part in Welles' Caesar. He strolls by New York's Mercury Theater one afternoon, and the next thing he knows he's drafted to play the ukulele (which doubles as a lute) and given a role opposite Welles' Brutus. Over the course of a week, Richard, dubbed "Junior," is pulled into the impetuous Welles' inner circle and finds romance with an older woman (Claire Danes). Efron is hampered by occasional mumbling and lacks the chemistry with Danes to make their connection believable. And Richard's chance meeting with an aspiring writer (Zoe Kazan) is stilted. Much of the movie is bathed in a golden glow, and the score helps to conjure the era. But some of the dialogue sounds modern. This is not one of director Richard Linklater's better films. It lacks the intimacy of Before Sunset and the sense of celebration of The School of Rock. The movie is worth seeing for McKay, but it sometimes feels like two movies cobbled together. Efron's Richard is somewhat of a cipher. It's unclear why he's drawn to acting, though he eventually realizes that he is committed to being a part of the artistic world. Welles would use the same encouraging words to pump up his chosen players. At one point he praises Richard's "magnificence." Though Welles doesn't consistently enthrall as a tribute to the stage, McKay is a magnificent surprise. Guidelines: You share in the USA TODAY community, so please keep your comments smart and civil. Don't attack other readers personally, and keep your language decent. Use the "Report Abuse" button to make a difference. You share in the USA TODAY community, so please keep your comments smart and civil. Don't attack other readers personally, and keep your language decent. Use the "Report Abuse" button to make a difference. Read more ||||| Liam Daniel / CinemaNX Films One Christian McKay as Orson Welles and Zac Efron as Richard Samuels in Me and Orson Welles 
 
 Imagine you adore a blue-eyed young man with a pert nose and a soft wave of brown hair, and so you get your parents to take you to his latest movie, Me and Some Dead Guy Who Was Famous Once and the boy is even cuter than usual, but there's also this big guy, with crazy eyes and much less docile hair, who talks about Shakespeare (kill me now), insults everybody  the cute boy worst of all  and chews cigars and sometimes when he talks you see actual spit coming out of his mouth? And on the way home your parents start talking about Oscar nominations, which they never did after High School Musical 3 and it turns out that they aren't talking about Zac at all, but Crazy Eyes? Wouldn't that be a major bummer? 
 
 Unless, that is, you're more curious about Orson Welles than about the charming but still callow Zac Efron. In the new Richard Linklater film, Me and Orson Welles, a youthful Welles is brilliantly embodied by Christian McKay in one of those, hey-who's-that? performances that tends to draw Oscar talk, even if the film itself isn't much more than an extremely pleasant lark. It is set in 1937, when Welles was just 22 and his ego was better established than his career. His broadcast of H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds was a year away, Citizen Kane four years. But already Welles was keeping multiple mistresses and holding an entire cast hostage to his whims. "The principal occupation of the Mercury Theater is waiting for Orson," explains the young John Houseman (Eddie Marsan). (See pictures of Zac Efron's career in film.) 
 
 Based on Robert Kaplow's young adult novel of the same name, the story blends fictional characters with real ones. Efron plays a fictional one: 17-year-old Richard Samuels, a high school student who worships Noel Coward and who acts as our main conduit into Welles' world. Welles plucks Richard off the street and gives him a small but crucial part in his version of Julius Caesar, which truly was performed, to great success  in modern dress with a fascist theme  at New York's Mercury Theater that fall. 
 
 Spending a week in Welles's orbit, Richard learns how to light a match in the coolest possible way, how to impress a girl and, like Icarus, he discovers what happens when you get too close to a star. He rubs elbows with plenty of real people who were fast becoming Welles' loyalists, like Houseman, Joseph Cotton (James Tupper), George Coulouris (Ben Chaplin) and radio star Les Tremayne (Michael Brandon) as well as one fictional dream girl, Sonja (Claire Danes), a Vassar grad who functions as the production's girl Friday and occasionally, as Welles requires it, geisha to the resident genius. (Watch an interview with Zac Efron.) 
 
 McKay's performance, which marries physical resemblance to internal channeling  he's practiced in this, having written and performed a one-man show called Rosebud: The Lives of Orson Welles  is exceptional. But there's one insurmountable problem: his age. He's 36, and passing for Welles at 22 is more than a stretch, especially when you're up against the world's biggest teenybopper. When Orson and Richard are briefly positioned as romantic rivals for Sonja, it's ludicrous, no matter how much charisma Efron exudes  since our perception of him is as a man in his mid-30s, based on McKay's appearance, it hardly seems like a legitimate context. Sonja is not as worldly as she'd like us to believe  she's all red lipstick and knowing looks  but she and Richard still seem light-years apart in terms of maturity. It doesn't help the plot's credibility that there's something slightly off about Danes  her vivacity is a kettle threatening to boil over  and that we, along with Richard, have already met his far better match, a quirky aspiring writer (the adorable Zoe Kazan) who is his equal in unjaded excitement. 
 
 Linklater (Dazed and Confused, School of Rock) usually sticks to contemporary stories, or ones set in the recent past. (An exception, The Newton Boys, a 1920s-set western, was his least memorable film.) Nothing about Me and Orson Welles suggests a directorial affinity for period pieces. When a vintage ambulance pulls up to transport Welles around Manhattan, you half expect the prop master to pop out and buff the hood with pride. But Linklater's great strength lies in showing how "families" form in unexpected places, especially when it's a question of putting on a show. Here we're witnessing not only genius at work (watching rehearsals, we might doubt this Julius Caesar, but what we see of the opening night is electrifying; that's when you really thrill to McKay's Welles) but also the way Richard falls in love with the idea of theatrical family. (See TIME's holiday movie guide.) 
 
 In one scene, Richard is exploring backstage, and we feel his pleasure in his insider status; he's puffed up from it. Then he lights a match to better examine graffiti left by someone who walked these boards in earlier days and inadvertently sets off the theater's sprinkler system, dousing everything, including Welles, who is madder than a wet cat. It perfectly catches the mood of the theater as seductress: one minute, she wants you, she makes you feel blessed, another, she reminds you what a buffoon you are to believe you belong here. 
 
 See TIME's Pictures of the Week. ||||| "Me and Orson Welles" is a frothy backstage pass, courtesy of director Richard Linklater, to the early days of the great director (that would be Welles) during a stint as the mercurial head of the Mercury Theater Company in 1937.Adapted from Robert Kaplow's novel, the "Me" is a teenager whose coming-of-age story unfolds during the staging of Welles' groundbreaking reimagining of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar as a '30s-era Fascist dictator. The teen in question is Richard Samuels, played by "High School Musical" heartthrob Zac Efron, a senior who slips out of class and into NYC only to get swept up in Welles' retinue, with a small part tossed his way as a bone.The film's other key players are Claire Danes as the director's whip-smart assistant and sometime lover Sonja; Christian McKay as Welles, who bears a striking resemblance to the man and has a good handle on his pretension and ambition; and Zoe Kazan as Gretta Adler, an aspiring writer and the occasional object of young Richard's affection when he's not mooning over Sonja.Richard's problem is really Efron's problem too, and thus the film's (which may be why it stumbled around the festival circuit for nearly a year before finding a distributor). The character spends most of the movie trailing Welles around like a puppy, only occasionally biting the hand that feeds him. The role was supposed to mark Efron as a grown-up actor and while he's pleasant enough he remains very much in the puppy-training phase, with Danes and McKay holding on to most of the movie's treats.Linklater always brings a great sense of place to his projects, whether it's "School of Rock's" classroom antics with Jack Black, the stoner high school students of "Dazed and Confused," or Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke wandering Paris in 2004's "Before Sunset." Though the production team gives us a lovely re-creation of the New York theater district circa 1937, the filmmaker truly finds his footing inside the Mercury where the casting, the staging and the catastrophes play out.But it's the clashing egos as much as the brilliant theater that interests Linklater here. The script, written by Holly Gent Palmo and Vince Palmo, has Welles moving through the theater troupe like a shark, feeding on anyone who is weaker than he is, which means everyone. Roles are expanded and contracted with abandon, actors hired and fired, lovers taken and discarded with a pregnant wife not treated much better.McKay, a British stage actor who was doing an off-Broadway production about the movie legend when casting started, and Danes, whose acting always seems so effortlessly good, are the best things about the film.But as in life, the presence of Welles never fails to overtake things and McKay's command of the subject is so Welles-ian that when he's in a scene everyone else fades a little. And neither the director (that would be Linklater) nor the film ever quite recover from that. ||||| And so Richard begins a whirlwind week that involves rubbing shoulders with other actors in the Mercury troupe, among them Joseph Cotten (channeled beautifully by James Tupper), who's busy sleeping his way through every girl in the Manhattan phone book, and George Coulouris (Ben Chaplin), who wears a veneer of coolness but who's really a nervous wreck. Richard also, of course, can't help wanting to woo Sonja, even though a young, aspiring writer he's just met, Zoe Kazan's Gretta, falls more safely into his league. 
 
 The picture, based on Robert Kaplow's novel of the same name, takes place during the course of one week in 1937, just as Welles is getting his Mercury Theater off the ground. Welles, played by English actor Christian McKay, is putting the final touches on an ambitious production of "Julius Caesar," in which he's cast himself as Brutus. Impulsively and casually, he hires a school kid and wannabe actor, Zac Efron's Richard, to play the role of Lucius. The main requirement for the part is that Richard should be able to play a ukulele disguised as a lute, though he also learns, from Welles' comely and ambitious assistant, Sonja (Claire Danes), that the actor previously cast in the role had been unceremoniously dismissed by Welles, not because of a personality conflict, but because the younger actor had a personality, period. Welles may pretend to share the stage with his fellow actors, but he leaves no doubt this is his show. 
 
 Whether filmmaker and actor extraordinaire Orson Welles knew he was great from the beginning or made himself great out of sheer will is one of the great mysteries of show business. And with his charming if whisper-weight "Me and Orson Welles," director Richard Linklater does little to either illuminate or puncture that mystery: He allows, simply, that Welles was a genius creation of either God or man. 
 
 This is a standard coming-of-age story set in a milieu that's anything but standard, and that's what keeps the picture's motor running. Linklater is nothing if not a versatile director, having helmed the rapturous bookend love stories "Before Sunrise" and "Before Sunset" as well as raucous mainstream comedies like "School of Rock" and "Bad News Bears," not to mention rotoscope-animation experiments like "Waking Life" and "A Scanner Darkly." Even so, "Me and Orson Welles" is something altogether different for him, a gentle, semi-historical period piece. The picture is enjoyable, if somewhat meandering -- the direction could use a bit more zip, a more urgent sense of momentum. 
 
 But the script, by Holly Gent Palmo and Vincent Palmo Jr., gives the actors plenty to work with, and Linklater's approach seems to have been to stand back and let them run with it. Danes, as a college-educated woman who's toiling away at the bottom of the showbiz ladder and doesn't want to stay there, walks a deft line, capturing her character's vulnerability and shrewdness. Eddie Marsan -- so wonderful as the hotheaded driving instructor in Mike Leigh's "Happy-Go-Lucky," -- makes an elegantly mannered, eternally nervous John Houseman. 
 
 The Sun King at the center of it all is Welles himself. This is hardly a flattering portrait -- as he's shaped and played here, Welles is a cruel game-player, probably meaner and more self-centered than even the preternaturally confident Welles really was. Still, McKay and Linklater betray a great deal of affection for this boastful genius, and McKay, with his baby-faced features and satiny voice, is wildly charismatic. This is the kind of performance that flirts with the scary truth that arrogance can be sexy. 
 
 So where does that leave Efron, who not so long ago starred in the shamelessly entertaining "High School Musical 3" and who now yearns to shed his heartthrob image? It's possible that Efron is too good-looking for his own good: Watching him, I always have to fight the urge to dismiss him, just because it seems unfair that any human being should have been born that cute. But I always come away thinking he's an actor who's likable enough now, and who may be able to grow even more. And I fear for him as I fear for any young actor who can also sing and dance: Those are gifts that few movies have much use for these days. 
 
 And so when Richard, upon learning that Sonja's last name is Jones, brazenly serenades her with a line from Rodgers and Hart, I wondered what he might be able to do with the rest of the song. "Have you met Miss Jones?" he croons to her, and she waves him away, having heard that line a million times before. Maybe she's heard it a million times before, but we haven't. "Me and Orson Welles" is a sweet, modest snapshot of a long-lost time when a bold kid with a showbiz dream and a little luck could actually get somewhere, and if he could sing and dance to boot, his chances of success would be even greater. Zac Efron fits right into 1937; in 2009, he's a lost boy.
– Richard Linklater's Me and Orson Welles, an atmospheric period piece set behind the scenes of Welles' 1937 production of Julius Caesar, has critics gushing about Christian McKay as Orson Welles, but split on Zac Efron as a wide-eyed teen who stumbles into Welles's glamorous orbit: The "frothy" film is upstaged by its own subject, the larger-than-life Welles, writes Besty Sharkey in the LA Times. When McKay's on screen, "everyone else fades a little"—including Efron, in a role that reveals he's still "very much in the puppy-training phase." Writing in Salon, Stephanie Zacharek praises McKay's performance, which "flirts with the scary truth that arrogance can be sexy," and notes the film is set in "a long-lost time when a bold kid with a showbiz dream and a little luck could actually get somewhere. Zac Efron fits right into 1937; in 2009, he's a lost boy." The movie could use more Orson Welles, less Me and, Claudia Puig writes in USA Today. McKay's a "revelation"; Efron is "likable but lackluster"; and the combination of their stories "feels like two movies cobbled together." Mary Pols, writing for Time, has one quibble about the exceptional McKay: his age. "He's 36, and passing for Welles at 22 is more than a stretch, especially when you're up against the world's biggest teenybopper."