Jeffrey Blitz knows how to let kids be kids. In Rocket Science, his feature film debut, as in his Academy Award-nominated documentary Spellbound, he presents adolescence as it really is. His characters are capable of poise and insight, but Blitz never forgets how immature teenagers usually are, frustrating and annoying in their awkwardness and intensity. Blitz's teens earn our respect because they fight for dignity, and win our hearts when he lets them lose.
Hal Hefner (Reece Daniel Thompson) is a stuttering high school student singled out by sexy fast-talker Ginny Ryerson (Anna Kendrick) to join the debate team. It's a ludicrous proposition. Hal can't even order pizza from the cafeteria, he's so tongue-tied. But Hal decides to go for it anyway, and starts getting ready for his public speaking debut--mainly because he's enthralled by Ginny's shiny, clean hair and irresistible confidence.
Blitz makes some missteps. He uses a third-person narrator to bookend the film, but the device ends up being more confusing than illuminating. And Hal's closing speech strikes the kind of wrong note that Blitz so expertly avoids, turning Hal into a movie teenager that has all the answers. There are some structural weaknesses; however, it was refreshing to see a script that hasn't been developed within an inch of its life.
The cast is uniformly superb, with Thompson doing a marvelous job at performing a stutter without showing off the technique. Vincent Piazza as Hal's older brother Earl is a comic gold mine, and newcomer Josh Kay steals every scene he's in as Lewis, Ginny's overly confident, socially inept neighbor. Lewis's idea of making friends is to ask Hal if he wants to see a bra, and blithely continue putting it on even while Hal's sidling out the door.
There's enough plot available to carry the film through a series of outlandishly comic set pieces, expertly directed by Blitz and edited by Yana Gorskaya. A sequence set to "Kiss Off" by the Violent Femmes is reminiscent of the great revenge sequence in Wes Anderson's Rushmore, but the comparison only an invocation. Rocket Science absolutely stands on its own. Especially when it's tripping on itself.
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January 8, 2008 - 7:26pm
