Cynical Cinema

Rocket Science is another in a seemingly endless series of teenage-angst indie artsy movies. It comes on the heels of Rushmore, The Squid and the Whale, Thumbsucker, and many others like it. These movies all have common plot points and characters. The central character is usually a young man who is having trouble with his adolescence, and who has one major flaw that is holding him back, or causing him grief. In the case of Thumbsucker, that one problem is fairly obvious. In the case of Rocket Science, it is a painful stutter. Hal Hefner has a habit of stuttering. The characters that surround this main character, especially his family, are usually quirky if not outright lunatics. No exception in Rocket Science, as Hal lives with his older brother, a creepy weirdo who also happens to be a kleptomaniac. His mom chases away his dad, then hooks up with the weirdo judge who lives next door, then chases HIM away. That judge has a strange, quiet, homosexual son, who seems to be Hal’s only friend. That is the major failing of Rocket Science. The movie is not content to simply make Hal’s family a bunch of freaks, so is EVERYONE else in the movie.

Hal is pretty much an outcast at school. A realistic one, in that no one is giving him wedgies and cramming him in lockers and so forth, they just ignore him. One day, a young woman approaches Hal and recruits him for the debating team. Hal is taken aback, what with his obvious disability when it comes to speaking. But this is the first girl, we would assume, who has ever talked to him, and he immediately falls head over heels in love. This girl, Ginny Ryerson, is a master debater. Apparently, in high school debates, the best debaters talk at one million miles an hour. This makes sure that no one listening to those debates has any idea whatsoever what they’re saying, and the judges I guess assume that they are being eloquent and brilliant, and give them points. Or something. This motormouth thing caused me to really dislike Ginny right from the start. You understand why Hal is so into her - she’s hot, and she talks to him. But for the movie watcher, she is irritating, and you really don’t want her to be the heroine of the picture. It comes as a big relief when she does something really heinous, so you can hate her for her actions as WELL as for her personality.

Ginny’s family are strange, hardcore, uptight weirdos. The family across the street are even stranger - their son is a cross-dressing, sexually twisted little pervert, and his parents are similar. The first time we meet this family, we see the parents engaged in some kind of bizarre sexual therapy that involves playing The Violent Femmes’ Blister In The Sun on the cello. There are two big problems with Rocket Science. First, there is just too much weird surrounding this kid, and he seems like the normal centre of the movie in comparison. And second, his stuttering makes it tough to sit through certain points. You constantly root for him to break out of the stutter and just spit out his thoughts, and when he doesn’t, it’s a little painful to watch. But all that aside, this movie is actually very good. The dialogue is clever, crisp and moves along at lightning speed (except when it is being stuttered), Reece Thompson is excellent as Hal, and the ending is tremendously satisfying in a very non-Hollywood sort of way. If you can get by the stuttering and the weird, you will really enjoy this very smart movie.

Rocket Science comes out this coming Tuesday, from Alliance Atlantis.