Movie Review - 'She's Out Of My League'

She's Out Of My League Starring Jay Baruchel and Alice Eve Directed by Jim Field Smith Rated R

We all know or have known a couple like this: A really hot girl is seemingly entranced by a geek, a dork, a schlub - a guy who has, in the parlance of sports fans, outpunted his coverage. How does that happen? Is it out of pity? If there's a mutual attraction...how in the hell does that work? We don't get an explanation, the key that unlocks the great mystery, from the new comedy She's Out of My League, although it probably gives geeks, dorks, and schlubs plenty of hope. The story is not special, and in fact, if not for the fact that the winsome Alice Eve is drawn in by Jay Baruchel - who makes Bill Gates look like Brad Pitt - the setup for this film is assembly line stuff. The characters are roughly the same thing you see in every romantic comedy: His group of chauvinistic friends (plus the sensitive one) and her quirky BFF. For years, the quirky BFF was either Zooey Deschanel or Judy Greer, and now it's Krysten Ritter's turn. She played this exact same character last year in Confessions of a Shopaholic, but she has more dialogue now. Of his chauvinistic friends, T.J. Miller more or less runs away with the film, attracting and delivering with great timing the movie's best, most memorable dialogue. Kirk (Baruchel) meets Molly (Eve) at the airport. Isn't that romantic? Well no, not really. She's flying from Pittsburgh - which emerges as one of the film's best characters - to New York and passes through Kirk's line at airport security. At first, there are no sparks. Not from her, at least. But she left her phone behind at the security checkpoint so she and Kirk are destined to meet again. And so they do meet again and Molly begins to see something she never could on first glance. Not too slowly, her curiosity builds into legitimate interest and suddenly, a "hard 10" is on the arm of a 5. There are ebbs and flows and a steady stream of disbelief from, well, just about everybody else. The charm of She's Out of My League, and there's plenty, comes from its smart, genuine dialogue. In a lot of cases, films are overwritten to the point that the words the characters say don't sound natural to themselves or the situation. They're overly clever just to show off how clever the writer is. It's especially bad with comedies, which almost have to show off how clever they are. Outside of a few scenes designed to prime the engines, the dialogue in this film is really quite good without resorting to divebombing the story its designed to support. It also rings familiar, in that many of the issues a hard 10 and a 5 find themselves dealing with are the same ones that two sevens might face. That shows that the movie actually cares about its characters rather than just moving them like chess pieces, which makes everything better. There is still a bit too much insistence to play by the genre rules, and I think based on the strength of the other pieces, there's no need to be so slavish to the established format. Use it as a jumping-off point, yes, but then write your own movie.

Comments

[Rob]

Sounds like a good rental and nothing more.

[Don Draper]

It was funny couple of clever lines. Not a bad spring flick considering that we are within 7 weeks to Iron Man 2 & Robin Hood. Somewhat decent I was hoping to do a double header, this movie with Hot Tub Time Machine. Not a crapfest that is usually rolled out at this time of year,

[Don Draper]

I just thought about it if they could've re written parts of the movie, I would've wiped out the whole subplot about the ex boyfriend really wasn't neccasary did nothing for the story. I liked the bitchy best friend wish there was a little more to her like why she was the way she was best line of the movie I could be wrong, "Who brought along the sunshine, care bear get this chick some honey" I am probably wrong, it was that good. A tolerable date movie, a little crude but not by much.

[Brian]

Surprise ending???

[Dol]

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