Though Rocket Science appears to be a typically quirky indie, the well-rounded performances and director Jeffrey Blitz's clear affection for his characters gives the film its proper human spark.
Though Rocket Science appears to be a typically quirky indie, the well-rounded performances and director Jeffrey Blitz's clear affection for his characters gives the film its proper human spark.
audience
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liked it
Average Rating: 3.6/5
User Ratings: 19,320
Jeffrey Blitz's seriocomedy Rocket Science proves that many a handicap can be overcome, no matter how daunting the obstacle at hand may initially seem. Newcomer Reece Thompson plays Hal Hefner, a 15-year-old high-school student with a minor yet socially alienating (and painful) disability: he stutters uncontrollably. Determined to work through the problem, Hal opts for an extreme route -- he joins the school debating team, which sends him on a headfirst plunge into breakneck speech competitions
-- and offers a much-needed boost toward correcting the problem. Blitz, like his onscreen alter ego, struggled with a stammer as a young man -- a disability he eventually surmounted -- which imparted him with a lifelong interest in speech and storytelling. ~ Nathan Southern, Rovi
Quietly written and convincingly played, this coming-of-age story mines its rueful laughs from a thick vein of performance anxiety, in both senses of the term.
Rocket Science flies beyond the standard teen preoccupations, moving into territory that combines humor and eccentricity with fragile hope and ambition, making for a film that embraces every awkward angle of adolescence.
Each character has his or her own lovable peculiarity--from the friend's parents who play Violent Femmes duets on the cello to the speech therapist who gives too many details about his personal life--small details that don't threaten to overshadow Hal's s
The DVD edition has only one extra, the routine making-of-docu, perhaps a function of low budget. Too bad that writer-director Jeffrey Blitz doesn't offer his commentary, using the sense of humor he showed in his DVD for his docu Spellbound.
A witty, touching and offbeat spin on the coming-of-age genre that also offers an amusing look into the surprisingly cut-throat world of high school debating.
Enjoyably offbeat comedy drama with likeable characters and a terrific script, though its relentlessly unconventional nature is ultimately frustrating.
I spent the vast majority of this movie trying to decide whether, or not, I liked it. The characters were definitely interesting, but overall I don't think that this film hit on the point that it was trying to make. Not a bad movie, just not that special.
A stutterer joins his high school debate team at the behest of a woman with whom he quickly falls in love.Anna Kendrick, whose performance in Up in the Air showed her to be a strong if somewhat stilted actress, is nearly perfect as the debater/femme fatale in this quirky independent dramedy. And though Reece Daniel
Thompson doesn't achieve a Colin Firth level of tortured stuttering, he is nonetheless compelling.There are also some really funny and touching moments. I particularly laughed out loud at "There's now a cello in your house." However, the narration is overbearing. There is a constant musical score dominated by quickly strummed guitar chords that make me think these were added because they're required in independent films, not because the score accentuated the storytelling. Finally, there were several moments of over-editing. Contrast Rocket Science with A King's Speech, in which the camera stayed fixed on the King as he tried to spit out his words; in Rocket Science there are needless cross cuts to reaction shots that show little reaction.Overall, like many independent films, Rocket Science is one to watch for the performances and occasionally clever script, not for its direction.
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