The trailer maintains the epistolary format of the novel, with Logan Lerman narrating as Charlie, an introverted freshman coping with the suicide of his best friend and trying to find his way socially.  The focus is on Charlie and his central relationships with Sam and Patrick, seniors played by Emma Watson, known the world over as Hermione from the Harry Potter movies, and Ezra Miller, who did fantastic, unnerving work in last year's We Need to Talk About Kevin.

For most folks, our high school years are times of hyper-sensitivity and burgeoning self-awareness, where any event, no matter how trivial in the long run, seems monumentally important, with bottomless emotional stakes and endless profundity.  This trailer, which premiered at MTV, plays the same way.  Decide for yourself if it's too much, but it looks promising from where I'm watching.

Paul Rudd gets a moment in there, but the cast also includes the likes of Nicholas Braun, Mae Whitman, Johnny Simmons, Nina Dobrev, Melanie Lynskey, and Kate Walsh.  Everyone is working under Chbosky, a rare novelist who gets to adapt his own material as both screenwriter and director.  The author's presence behind the camera will doubtless assuage many fears of the novel's fans, waiting as they are with baited breath until September 14th of this year.

And here's the poster, which, with its color scheme at least, echoes the familiar MTV-published book cover, pictured at the bottom of the page.