Rocket Science by Paul Bullock

Ever since Napoleon Dynamite first pulled on his Vote For Pedro t-shirt and struck pop culture gold in 2004, geeks have found themselves on ground they have rarely occupied since Revenge of the Nerds. From The 40-Year Old Virgin to Superbad, this cultural underclass has been thrust into the cinematic limelight, their quests for hot chicks and cold beer generating laughs of sympathy, relation and yet also derision. Napoleon Dynamite, with his 80s fashions and exaggerated mannerisms, felt a caricature of American weirdness, while Seth from Superbad was so unpleasantly sex-obsessed that he seemed more misogynistic nymphomaniac than simple horny teen.

Rocket Science offers a very different kind of geek. High school student Hal Hefner is a chronic stutterer. He’s shy, picked on by his older brother and rendered mere collateral when his feuding parents finally decide to get a divorce. His councillor knows more about treating hyperactivity than helping stutters and his only friends are a strange Indian kid and the potentially gay son of his mother’s new boyfriend Judge Pete, neither of whom he seems to know very much about at all. His life is turned around, however, by Ginny, the ambitious star of the school’s debate team who he embarks upon a doomed love affair with.

If all this sounds a little too familiar, you’re probably a fan of Wes Anderson. Making his fiction film debut, Spellbound director Jeffrey Blitz here struggles to find a unique authorial voice and borrows liberally from the indie auteur to make up for it. The school setting, bitter-sweet love story and even nerdy fashions echo those of Anderson’s sophomore film Rushmore; the child’s perspective on divorce angle was used in his Life Aquatic co-writer Noah Baumbach’s directorial debut The Squid and The Whale and if you’re fond of Alec Baldwin’s gravel-voiced narration from The Royal Tenenbaums be prepared for an almost identical replay.

Blitz‘s experience as a documentarian also means his fiction film pacing and structure sag badly in the middle as he struggles to fabricate a 98 minute long story without having real life to fall back on. However, it does help build a film full of real, wryly observed details. Hal answers class questions on his notepad rather than orally to avoid displaying his stutter publicly and he hides in the janitor‘s closet when things get too tough. Reece Daniel Thompson captures these pained traits perfectly, giving a character who could have been a cliché depth and dimension. However, it‘s Anna Kendrick as Ginny who steals the show, her confident yet vulnerable turn allowing the love story to spark convincingly with the awkward horror of youthful infatuation.

And this is what ultimately makes the difference in Rocket Science. It may not be as popular as Napoleon Dynamite, as crudely funny as Superbad or instigate a small subgenre like The 40 Year Old Virgin did, but it’s arguably superior to each one. Blitz has crafted a gentle, sweet little movie which secures its director‘s fiction film future with a scene involving pizza. If this were Superbad, our hero would have stuck his knob in it or dropped it down a girl’s shirt in order to cop a feel. Here, though, it’s used to generate a heartwarming scene of personal triumph that could well go down as the feel good moment of the year.