[Movie Review] She’s Out of My League (2010)

She’s Out of My League stars Jay Baruchel as Kirk, a nerdy guy who works in an airport who works with all of his best friends. He finds a lost iPhone that happens to belong to a hot “perfect 10” named Molly. When he returns it to her they hit it off and begin a relationship, despite the obvious difference in their public statuses.

The movie fails to highlight the genuine attraction that Molly would have for Kirk at first, and only later begins to explain that she’s looking for a guy who isn’t going to hurt her in a long term relationship. Of course, Kirk is more than happy to reap the benefits by dating a girl obviously out of his league.

The chemistry between Baruchel and Molly (Alice Eve) is decent, but the problem lies with Baruchel’s inability to carry a movie by himself. I’m not a huge fan of his usually, and he provides little here to believe he can ever be anything more than a peripheral character in a comedy. He doesn’t play the awkward guy as well as some might think, and it’s somewhat annoying at points here. Still, Kirk is a decently honest guy who realizes his great luck, and he’s not terrible.

Alice Eve as Molly isn’t particularly memorable either. She’s pretty attractive, and her characters only “flaw” is webbed feet. Ha, ha, ha. We get it. She isn’t “perfect”. She’s intelligent, good looking, into hockey, and she’s trying really to give this relationship a shot. She’s a cool chick. Still, the character was obviously written by a male because she never says anything worth remembering.

Kirk’s friends at the airport aren’t much better. They want to recreate the fun buddy moments from Knocked Up or I Love You, Man but it never once gets the balance right. T.J. Miller as Stainer really wants to be  Jason Segal or Seth Rogen, but his style doesn’t work. He throws so much at you throughout the movie that when something is actually worthy of a chuckle, it doesn’t really get it because you’re so exhausted from the rapid fire series of jokes that preceded it.

The main flaw is that the movie is just so damn bland that it never draws you in. No character, no joke, no scene makes you want to see where anything goes. There are problems with pacing, random music montages, and the random congruency between Molly’s ex being a stud fighter pilot and Kirk being a non college graduate, wannabe pilot.

Final Words:

She’s Out of My League is much more standard romantic comedy movie that I’d anticipated, but it doesn’t seem to recognize it. It wants to be a thoughtful, Apatowian dude flick, but it fails to achieve those lofty heights.

The movie isn’t what you’re thinking, because it’s supposed to be a comedy and it isn’t really funny. The jokes rarely hit, the characters aren’t enjoyable, and the concept of an attractive girl aggressively pursuing a relationship with a scrawny failure is less realistic than Spider-Man.

Score: 4.5/10 (More Bad than Good)

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