She's Out of My League

Can't say I understand much about the dating world besides the fact that people often go out on dates and get to fool around afterwards. Yup, that's about all I know, but my lack of knowledge regarding this subject helped me to understand Jay Baruchel's hapless Kirk in the new romantic comedy She's Out of My League, and I was glad to see that he had a couple of moves to show off. Kirk's life is stuck in a predictable routine wherein he goes to work, hangs out with his friends, is derided by his sibling, condescended to by his family, and bored with his job as a Transportation Security Administrator at the Pittsburgh International Airport. Not much has changed over the last ten years and he can't get over the one girl he ever dated, Marnie (Lindsay Sloane), who has managed to maintain a social relationship with his parents. Then, out of the blue, like a wild, blond, voluptuous, productive, maelstrom, Molly (Alice Eve) enters his life, fully equipped with a well paying job and a vivacious personality. She's into Kirk but Kirk can't figure out why and the two engage in a complicated dialogue concerning the compatibility of their divergent lifestyles.

If you like raunchy masculine jock humour tempered by contemplative productive principles you'll probably enjoy She's Out of My League. Jim Field Smith layers his film with a thorough contingent of adolescent humour, considerate compromises, and elated evaluations. The subject matter (should a well endowed successful female date a gaunt mundane male) receives serious reflection and writers Sean Anders and John Morris don't simply pepper their dialogue with one-dimensional catch phrases (Kirk's friends each represent a character type however: Stainer the jock extreme, Jack, the thoughtful mechanic, Kirk, the comic unconfident shy individual, Devon, the sensitive helpful married man [T. J. Miller, Mike Vogel, and Nate Torrence]). A couple of scenes could have been left out to shorten it up a bit, and the feminine point of view receives a lot less screen time, but its final message is something I have to applaud for it firmly suggests that hope still exists.