2007
Director: Jeffrey Blitz
Viewed: March 6, 2008
Format: DVD - HBO (2008)
Facile quirk has become so ubiquitous and poorly handled in teen comedy that it is actually transmuting into ordinary mean-spirited snickering. In a film such as Rocket Science, which exhibits tantalizing flickers of maturity and depth, this kind of ugly faux-oddness is a maddening, crippling blow. The lead performances are pleasurable and the plot is engagingly original: Boy Meets Girl, Boy Falls For Girl, Girl Uses Boy, Boy Plots Revenge That Fails. This is a potentially insightful and humane treatment of adolescent misconceptions about life, undermined by the sort of coarse direction and design that have become habitual.