Rocket Science 3 stars
Reece Thompson, Anna Kendrick, Nicholas D’Agosto
Directed by Jeffrey Blitz
As far as quirky coming-of-age tales about suburban high-schoolers go, Rocket Science is rather on the low end of the scale, not as unique as Wes Anderson’s grossly overrated Rushmore nor as genuine and charming as 2005’s underappreciated Thumbsucker. The narrative feature debut from Blitz, who directed the great spelling-bee documentary Spellbound, Rocket Science is full of mannered characters and oppressively whimsical music, with heavily ironic dialogue that often serves no purpose other than to encourage the audience to think, “Wasn’t that charmingly odd?”
In many cases the answer is no, but enough about Rocket Science is genuinely endearing that it comes out okay in the end. That’s mostly thanks to stars Thompson and Kendrick, who lend humanity to their gimmicked-up characters. Thompson’s Hal is a chronic stutterer with divorced parents and a bullying older brother; Kendrick’s Ginny is a snooty debate-team perfectionist who recruits Hal because she figures that the best debaters are the ones who have something to prove.
Thankfully Hal doesn’t blossom into some expert debater overnight—in fact the best he ever does is just about passable—and the movie hinges on his search for self-acceptance, which is portrayed as an ongoing process and not tied up neatly at the end. He falls hard for Ginny, but their relationship progresses unpredictably, and Blitz never indulges in the sickeningly whimsical indie-film love that can be just as insipid as any mainstream romantic comedy.
The characters on the margins don’t fare nearly as well, relegated mostly to one or two goofy traits, and Hal’s combative parents, supposedly the source of much of his angst, are left ill-defined and mostly off-screen. The plot lurches along in fits and starts, building to a climactic debate tournament that once again defies conventions, although the urgency of Hal’s twin competitive and romantic goals has sort of fizzled by that point. Luckily, every time Thompson opens his mouth and manages to get some words out, he gets you to care all over again.