Rocket Science

Saw Rocket Science, a coming-of-age story about a bitter little boy with a stutter who joins the debate club. He joins mainly as a means to get to know the assertive female star of the team. She initially recruits him and at first it seems like the film's going to be a cut-n-dry girl-fixes-boy love story and nearly veers in that direction, but the girl is uninterested in romance (good for her) and the boy quickly sinks into histrionics and yet bleaker bitterness. I found the protagonist fairly unlikeable. It's kind of hard to feel much sympathy for him when the only sentences he manages to quake out are sullen ones. Okay, okay, he's just a kid and, as the narrator puts it, he has this dream of a beautiful, confident voice and keenly feels the distance between the dream and reality.

Ultimately, he comes to accept himself, in all his limitations (no real spoiler there, this is an immediate consequence of the coming of age archetype.) He contacts an ex-debate star who spectacularly failed at the height of his game, clamming up mid-speech. The opening narration implies that on the day the ex-star stopped speaking, the beautiful dream of the voice appeared in the protagonist's head. This is not established very well however, especially since the protagonist and ex-debater look strikingly similar (I thought they were the same person at first. I had to write down their names.) I feel like this film was based on a short story that was probably better. It has these devices which feel terribly awkward.

Also of note: every debate topic is frankly sexual (Masturbation: good or bad? Abstinence: should schools advocate it?) The seasons always change suddenly, always marked by a nicely-framed shot of a couple kissing. There is a Korean neighbor who is either supposed to be inscrutably foreign or is slightly insane (and also maybe gay?) All of these things annoyed me to some degree.

I think this movie was stealing heavily from Wes Anderson (there are worse people to steal from, but they seem to only copy his stylistic quirks.) A strange mishmash of a film, it's full of false starts and red herrings (as I said, the first half of the film seems like a slightly quirky romance) and I think I got a little frustrated with it. In any case, I was left feeling dissatisfied and wanting to discuss it with someone. A surprisingly troubling film.

PS - No trivia on imdb. Nothing involved in making this movie was trivial.