SHE’S OUT OF MY LEAGUE
Starring Jay Baruchel, Alice Eve
Directed by Jim Field Smith
Molly is a hard 10 and Kirk is barely a five, so how could the beautiful girl with the great rack, cool job, and all that hockey knowledge want to bump bits with an awkward, lanky loser who works in airport security? Because She’s Out of My League is the quintessential male fantasy flick, wherein geeks inherit the earth and nail the babes, but with a tidy After-School Special self-esteem hug thrown in for good measure.
Kirk (Jay Baruchel) is invited to meet up with Molly (Alice Eve) after he finds her lost cellphone, and, much to his buddies’ shock, she asks him out on a date. As his friends and family talk incessantly — and often stupidly — about how impossibly hot Molly is, and how the “chasm” on the hotness scale is too wide for Kirk to make the leap, our gawky hero suffers numerous embarrassments and setbacks that culminate in a predictable climax.
The film’s premise, while very 1980s, doesn’t feel completely stale, thanks to some reasonably funny one-liners, a memorable testicles-shaving scene, and the two likeable leads. Eve’s not just a typical pretty face; she has a solid grasp on making Molly feel three-dimensional, no matter how hard the script attempts to reduce her to merely the sum of her body parts. Meanwhile, Baruchel conjures an enjoyable combination of Christian Slater, John Cusack, and Patrick Dempsey, with enough of his own wit added in to make Kirk empathetic even when he’s at his most irritating. She’s Out of My League scores two points for casting, but loses five for predictability, rendering it a victim of its own “Hot or Not?” scoring system. Mostly, it’s just lukewarm. ★★—Andrea Warner
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