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Rocket Science
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Quirky and sublime first-love dramedy about a stuttering young high-school boy (Reece Daniel Thompson) and the driven debating champ (Anna Kendrick) who to his surprise wants him as her debate-partner protege. Writer-director Jeffrey Blitz, without being preachy or obvious, shows us how family can come through when you least expect it, and how sometimes we can become better by going through what seems like the absolute worst. One instance each of rough language and profanity, several instances of crude and crass language, three scenes of young teens smoking or drinking, rude gestures, brief nudity in classical-art drawings, some pubescent sex talk, much debate-club discussion of abstinence policies and one instance each of implied sexual groping and off-camera sex sounds, both by adult characters. A-III -- adults. (R) 2007
With a heart as big as New Jersey, where this sublime first-love dramedy takes place, "Rocket Science" (Picturehouse) looks back like J.D. Salinger on the larger-than-life emotions and the absurd, embarrassing things that a heartbroken high school freshman can do when his first crush goes bad.
Young Hal Hefner (Reece Daniel Thompson) is at that age where a boy really starts to explore the world outside Mom and Dad's house. Complicating matters, however, his mother (Lisbeth Bartlett) and father (Denis O'Hare) suddenly and loudly separate, and Mom quickly takes up with the Asian district court judge (Stephen Park) next-door. Hal's older brother, Earl (Vincent Piazza), is a kleptomaniac, but he was stealing even before all this family chaos.
It's unclear whether all these factors made Hal begin to stutter or if he was doing it before. Either way, that stammering doesn't help him as he tries to break out of his shell the following fall at Plainsboro High.
What does help, or at least what he hopes will, is Ginny Ryerson (Anna Kendrick), the driven debating champ whose well-groomed girl-next-door look masks a podium bulldog who delivers monologues so rapid-fire you can practically see her synapses sparking.
To her shock and dismay, she came in second at last spring's state high school championship, after brilliant team partner Ben Wekselbaum (the very Johnny Depp-like Nicholas D'Agosto) suffered an existential crisis in the middle of the final round. Now Ginny tells the stunned Hal she sees promise and potential in him, and wants him as her debate-partner protege.
Nothing that follows in this sweetly quirky, off-kilter story is what you'd expect. There's a climactic championship like in a sports movie, but it doesn't recycle sports-movie tropes. Hal and Ben buddy up, but they don't become a buddy-movie cliche. We all know the course of true love never did run smoothly, but nobody said anything about the course of confusing mixed signals, puppy-dog desire and bad advice from older brothers.
Writer-director Jeffrey Blitz, whose one previous feature was the Oscar-nominated spelling-bee documentary "Spellbound," gives no pat answers for how Hal can fix his stutter, or his life. But without being preachy or obvious, he shows us how family can come through when you least expect it, and how sometimes we can become better by going through what seems like the absolute worst.
The film contains one instance each of rough language and profanity, several instances of crude and crass language, three scenes of young teens smoking or drinking, rude gestures, brief nudity in classical-art drawings, some pubescent sex talk, much debate-club discussion of abstinence policies, and one instance each of implied sexual groping and off-camera sex sounds, both by adult characters. The USCCB Office for Film & Broadcasting classification is A-III -- adults. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is R -- restricted. Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian.
Movies have been evaluated by the U.S. Conference of Catholic
Bishop's Office for Film and Broadcasting according to artistic
merit and moral suitability. The reviews include the USCCB rating,
the Motion Picture Association of America rating, and a brief
synopsis of the movie.
The classifications are as follows:
- A-I -- general patronage;
- A-II -- adults and adolescents;
- A-III -- adults;
- A-IV**
- L -- limited adult audience, films whose problematic content many adults would find troubling. L replaces the previous classification, A-IV.
- O -- morally offensive.
** Discontinued classification. All archived movies that were originally in the A-IV category are now classified as L.
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