★ 3 / 10
The first thing I found WRONG about this
Patrick E. Abe
The first thing I found WRONG about this movie is the title. "Rocket Science" suggests a movie like "October Sky," which IS about the Math required to…
The first thing I found WRONG about this movie is the title. "Rocket Science" suggests a movie like "October Sky," which IS about the Math required to calculate and understand rocketry. This (somewhat) off beat look at high school via a tongue-tied underachiever who is head hunted for the school debate team is more like "The Orator's Progress." (But accuracy won't/didn't sell the movie.)
All in all, a better-than-average teen movie, but nowhere near "The King's Speech," which grandly promenaded into History on a similar subject. 3/10
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★ 8 / 10
best Asian American movie I've seen this year
Seriously. I have to agree with the writer of the review at the top of the string of reviews. There's insight and brilliance in the script and in the…
Seriously. I have to agree with the writer of the review at the top of the string of reviews. There's insight and brilliance in the script and in the direction. Movies about high school kids will draw comparisons to all the high school films that preceded it, from Hughes to Apatow. Americans, we take our high school years very seriously...especially after we graduate. And we all have our favorite movies that deal with those four years of our lives (mine: "Donnie Darko," "Rushmore," and "Election"). Given time, I think "Rocket Science" will settle somewhere between "Election" and "Napolean Dynamite," for me."Rocket Science" is unique if you're willing to look beyond the surface similarities. Yes, this movie has a young protagonist who wants to overcome the odds to get the girl, with the help of friends, with interference from an antagonistic sibling, and parents who just don't seem to understand. That's practically a classical form by now. Euripides could fill in that outline.Already, there are 4 pages of reviews and I can only add this: the roles of the Asian Americans that writer and director Jeffrey Blitz carved out deserve comment. And that comment is: sweet! Astonishing, really. Someone mentioned "Juno" in these reviews and how "Rocket Science" achieved where "Juno" may have fell short. I skipped "Juno" but listened to at least three separate discussions on public radio and on the local AM stations about the Chinese-baby line used in the promotions. I understand that, in the context of the movie, it wasn't so bad. Nothing nearly that clumsy in "Rocket Science." Two Asian American actors get speaking roles and their lines are often hilarious: Stephen Park as Judge Pete who is jovial for no good reason and Aaron Yoo as his son, Heston, who crosses that line from admiring muscly dudes to really admiring them. The roles are clearly written as Asian American roles. In fact, father and son are identified, specifically, as Korean American, highlighted by Judge Pete's wailing of "ummah" in a scene where the judge is not so jovial. Blitz does wonderful work in identifying the characters as Asian American while not announcing their scenes as "The Asian Scenes." The jokes come, but not at their expense. There's a funny line about the casserole they bring to dinner which I won't spoil for those who haven't seen the movie yet. The exchange says more about the mother, aptly played by Lisbeth Bartlett, and her appetite for the exotic than the Asian-ness of her guests.Later in the film, the protagonist and Heston pair up in a speech competition, and employing a technique suggested by his school counselor to quell the stammer, Hal decides to affect an accent. The scene is brilliantly written, directed and edited. The last time I was surprised by how loud I laughed in a movie was when Bart had a full-frontal scene in "The Simpsons." There's also a scene with that same counselor speaking from home to Hal on the phone. There is a shot that includes his significant other who is Asian. It's uncanny (or is it uncannily canny). The casting: she's a good looking woman and, by most measures, he did better than his station or his looks. The composition: she is positioned in a way that suggests detachment and self-absorption, showing no interest in the conversation. She's in a bathrobe, trimming her toenails (or something similar) on the couch, displaying a level of comfort, in particular with her body, many Asians would find immodest and not-so-classy. A director with less skill would have had any Asian actress fiddling around in the background. Jeffrey Blitz creates something as precise as something Wes Anderson put on film, without the elements becoming ornamental.Yes, there are jokes in "Rocket Science," but it's not the joke-gag-joke rabbit punches of Apatow and his bunch and none of that numbing repetitive dissonance of their adult language spoken by what we're supposed to believe are goofy high school kids. They write as if they are haunted by moments from their high school years in which they could have uttered something clever and snappy but the words came only after dinner. Another memorable scene in "Rocket Science:" Hal visits the principal's office at a private school, and while he waits there, he discusses 2nd base with a girl that could be a delinquent. The girl's final remark is hilarious. And you believe it is something that could be said by a girl who was sent to the principal's office.
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★ 8 / 10
Another teen-age movie? Yes, and this one is good, especially since Hal finally gets pizza and not fish
Terrell-4
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…
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. Turns out she has some other, not so altruistic, motives. Hal first finds infatuation and what he thinks is love for this cute, smart high school star. He decides he'll join the debate team, even though he has never been able to get more than a sentence or two out of his mouth, because Ginny wants him to. Hal also has to deal with an older brother who bullies and steals, the break-up of his parents' marriage, and his mother taking up with the father of a schoolmate. Through it all, Hal perseveres. Those who think this movie will be a series of crude jokes and high school hormone scenes will be disappointed. Of course, those who think Hal will overcome that strangulating stammer, will win Ginny's heart and the two will face a tense debating contest which will leave them state champs...are going to be disappointed, too.
What Hal faces is a series of struggles and challenges, keyed to the awful inexperience and misunderstandings of adolescence. The director and writer, Jeffrey Blitz, who gave us the documentary Spellbound, sets up Hal and his world as a series of situations for Hal to deal with. There is no self-pity from Hal. As the movie progresses we figure out that Hal is not going to have an epiphany of speech or love, but that he's going to manage, even if just barely at times. Along the way we can enjoy what Blitz gives Hal...a high school speech counselor who only knows about hyper-active kids; Hal's continuing battle to deal with the choice of pizza or fish in the cafeteria; Ginny Ryerson's neighbors, a couple who work through their marriage issues with a cello, a piano and a copy of the illustrated Kama Sutra; the debate technique of "spreading," or cramming a breathless, fast-talking debate position into 30 seconds (ten if you're responding). I hope this is a Blitz invention. It causes some awe-inspiring situations...when a debater goes dry, when Hal tries, when Ginny wows 'em...but it seems as unnatural a part of real debate technique as miniature poodles are to dogs.
And at the close? "Love shouldn't be as complicated as rocket science," Hal says to his father. Most of us over the age of 30 have figured out that it shouldn't be, but usually is. Rocket Science is a good-natured, good-humored movie about a kid with a stammer who is willing to try for the sake of love. Is it a realistic slice of high school life? I wouldn't know. I tried my best to forget my high school years as quickly as I could.
For those who enjoy their high school movies filled with double-dealing, back-stabbing, uneasy laughter and wickedly sharp irony, you can't do better than Alexander Payne's black comedy, Election. Reese Witherspoon's over-achieving Tracy Flick would leave Ginny Ryerson with the stammer and Hal Hefner nothing but a moist lump in the janitor's closet.
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