Rocket Science

Written and directed by Jeffrey Blitz. Released by Picturehouse.

I really wanted to like Rocket Science. It had a good trailer, and while I haven’t actually seen Spellbound (also made by Jeffrey Blitz) yet, I’m perfectly willing to believe that it’s a good movie. So I’m unhappy to report that it’s just not very good.

The film is about an awkward teen named Hal (Reese Daniel Thompson) with a stuttering problem. His parents are recently separated, his older brother is pretty much a jerk, and he doesn’t seem to have any friends. In short, he’s miserable, until the star of the school debate team (Anna Kendrick) recruits him for the team. He quickly develops an overpowering crush on her, and tries to overcome his speech impediment in order to win her over.

Blitz’s obvious primary influence for this film was the work of Wes Anderson. A lot of shots seem composed with the same eye for symmetry that dominates Rushmore, and many of the characters are written and acted with the same eye for quirky detail that characterizes all of Anderson’s work. Plus, the movie’s narrator sounds uncannily like Alec Baldwin in The Royal Tenenbaums.

While I love those movies, though, Blitz is less successful. I’m tempted to say that Rocket Science is not so much similar to the Anderson movies, as outright derivitave of them. I probably feel about this movie the same way that people who don’t like Anderson feel about his movies.  On some level, a lot depends on how close the movie’s sense of humor matches your own, but I thought the characters were mostly just so over-the-top quirky that I simply didn’t recognize them as actual humans. A lot of people in the theater was laughing along with the movie, but I was annoyed.

It does have its moments, though. Most of them are supplied by Kendrick as Ginny, the fast-talking debate star. A movie about her might have been a lot more interesting, but machinations in the plot limit her involvement after roughly the halfway mark. Too bad. Kendrick seems like someone who could be Frances McDormand in 20 years – she has the same kind of ferocious intelligence and verbal acumen that McDormand brings to her best roles. I also thought a few of the moments when Hal’s anger boils over worked well enough; this happens about two or three times in the film and they’re Thompson’s best scenes.

But the movie on the whole is simply too uneven to work.  The underlying material for a good movie is probably there, but I think Blitz needed not to try so hard for humor and just let the characters work things out for themselves.  And it’s clear that Blitz has yet to find his voice as a director, and borrows too much from Anderson.  It’s a reasonably noble misfire, but still a misfire nonetheless.