Best film so far of 2007, November 13, 2007

I hope old Hollywood and what's become the new Hollywood, namely the Sundance Film Festival, haven't yet established that the angst of suburban high school life really is a metaphor for all those life lessons they want to share with us. Rocket Science is one more in a long line of sensitive and not-so-sensitive teen-age movies. Surprisingly, this one is pretty good. On the other hand, if you're not prepared early on to recognize low-key exaggeration to achieve humor and make a point ("Wait a minute, why didn't Hal just point to the pizza?") you might leave the theater scratching your head.Hal is Hal Hefner (Reese Thompson), a schlumping, unhappy, shy high school student with a stutter. The stutter, in fact, is more like a series of strangled gargles. He knows the answers; he has ideas...and he simply can't get them out. When the captain of the debating team, Ginny Ryerson (Anna Kendrick) recruits him to be her partner, it's because, she says, she can see his potential...

The word "pathetic" may be defined as "causing or evoking pity, sympathetic sadness, and sorrow." This would be an accurate depiction of fifteen-year-old Hal Hefner's life. He is a short, homely, and socially inept teen; he stutters so badly that he cannot even ask for the food he wants in the school cafeteria; his parents break up after a bitter fight; his older brother is a petty thief and bully who threatens him constantly; his mother takes up with a Korean judge who has a braying laugh and gropes Mom in public. For a short while, Hal spots a glimmer of light on his otherwise bleak horizon. Ginny Ryerson, star of his high school debate team, recruits him to replace her partner, who suffered a sudden meltdown. She proceeds to spend a great deal of time preparing Hal for the rigors of public speaking. How can this boy, who can barely say his own name, make it as a champion debater? Even more troubling, Hal falls in love with Ginny, and he allows himself to believe that maybe...

For some, the joys of being a teenager include excelling at sports, having a girlfriend or boyfriend, being part of a close circle of friends, or just having fun. For others, there is only the constant feeling of being an outsider looking in. For some, even the thought of getting out of bed in the morning to go to school is filled with dread. Case in point - Hal Hefner, a fifteen year old attending Plainsboro High School in New Jersey, who is trying to make sense of growing up but is burdened by a stutter so debilitating that he cannot even tell the cafeteria worker at school that he wants pizza instead of fish. Rocket Science, the second feature by Jeffrey Blitz (Spellbound), who overcame his own stuttering disability, is a teen comedy that poignantly captures the painful loneliness of adolescence.While on paper Rocket Science sounds like other coming of age films such as Election and Rushmore, it manages to capture something unique and very special about being a teenager...