JamesG
03-13-2010, 10:00 PM
Movie Reviews: She’s Out Of My League
Rick Groen in the Toronto Globe and Mail sums up the attitude of a lot of critics to She’s Out of My League: “Occasionally, along comes a picture so nearly good that you dearly wish it were better.”
League is one of those films, he implies.
Or as Michael O’Sullivan puts it in the Washington Post: “The movie clearly aspires to rise to the smutty-but-sweet synergy of other, better films. But She's Out of My League can't touch them.”
The league that this film finds itself in is that genre of male-fantasy films in which the nerdy lead character -- in this case, he’s played by Jay Baruchel -- discovers that the gorgeous object of his dreams -- played here by Alice Ever -- is actually smitten by him, too.
“We may know exactly where Kirk and Molly are headed -- he can't get over his good fortune and she can't abide being put on a pedestal -- but the movie keeps upending our expectations and provoking laughs,” writes Peter Howell in the Toronto Star.
And Joy Tipping in the Dallas Morning News goes so far as to call it her favorite movie of the year. “Yes, it's got ... its share of gross-out jokes and a plot that, at least on first glance, reeks of unoriginality. ... But She's Out of My League also boasts elements not so typically found in this genre, from above-average acting across the board to an overlying sweetness that tempers even the lamest of icky jokes.”
Betsy Sharkey in the Los Angeles Times displays the identical reaction, bestowing props for entering this genre of films “with a disarming sentimentality and a certain decency along with the requisite raunch and repressed rage.”
Of course, several critics have seen this sort of movie before, many times before, and they’re not in the market for a rehash.
Claudia Puig in USA Today remarks that the movie is “short on clever humor and big on convention and formula.”
And Walter Addiego in the San Francisco Chronicle delivers the coup de grace: “It's pretty sad,” he writes, “when one of a movie's best gags is that a character leads a Hall and Oates cover band.”
-IMDB News
Rick Groen in the Toronto Globe and Mail sums up the attitude of a lot of critics to She’s Out of My League: “Occasionally, along comes a picture so nearly good that you dearly wish it were better.”
League is one of those films, he implies.
Or as Michael O’Sullivan puts it in the Washington Post: “The movie clearly aspires to rise to the smutty-but-sweet synergy of other, better films. But She's Out of My League can't touch them.”
The league that this film finds itself in is that genre of male-fantasy films in which the nerdy lead character -- in this case, he’s played by Jay Baruchel -- discovers that the gorgeous object of his dreams -- played here by Alice Ever -- is actually smitten by him, too.
“We may know exactly where Kirk and Molly are headed -- he can't get over his good fortune and she can't abide being put on a pedestal -- but the movie keeps upending our expectations and provoking laughs,” writes Peter Howell in the Toronto Star.
And Joy Tipping in the Dallas Morning News goes so far as to call it her favorite movie of the year. “Yes, it's got ... its share of gross-out jokes and a plot that, at least on first glance, reeks of unoriginality. ... But She's Out of My League also boasts elements not so typically found in this genre, from above-average acting across the board to an overlying sweetness that tempers even the lamest of icky jokes.”
Betsy Sharkey in the Los Angeles Times displays the identical reaction, bestowing props for entering this genre of films “with a disarming sentimentality and a certain decency along with the requisite raunch and repressed rage.”
Of course, several critics have seen this sort of movie before, many times before, and they’re not in the market for a rehash.
Claudia Puig in USA Today remarks that the movie is “short on clever humor and big on convention and formula.”
And Walter Addiego in the San Francisco Chronicle delivers the coup de grace: “It's pretty sad,” he writes, “when one of a movie's best gags is that a character leads a Hall and Oates cover band.”
-IMDB News