One of the most accomplished efforts to debut at this year's Sundance Film Festival, Rocket Science is a quirky high-school comedy that borrows a few plot elements from Election and much of its sensibility from Wes Anderson, yet still somehow comes across as fresh and original. It helps that writer-director Jeffrey Blitz, best known for the hit documentary Spellbound, sets the film in a distinctive milieu that's largely been ignored or misrepresented in movies: the cutthroat world of policy debate (a.k.a. Oxford debate). This is a world I happen to know exceedingly well, having gotten as far as the California state championship tournament in 1984 and 1985, and while Blitz uses debate only as a backdrop and a narrative engine, he does make an effort to depict it accurately. In particular, he acknowledges the existence of "spreading," a delivery technique so rapid-fire that most untrained spectators are lucky if they comprehend half of what's being said. (You can see why the movies favor the laid-back, conversational style of presidential debates.)
Rocket Science's awkward protagonist, Hal Hefner (the winning Reece Daniel Thompson), wouldn't seem to be prime debate material, since he's afflicted with the most debilitating stutter since Michael Palin in A Fish Called Wanda. Nonetheless, he's recruited by debate-club star Ginny Ryerson, who claims to see an argumentative fire burning deep within him and is determined to stoke it by any means necessary. A type-A gorgon in the Tracy Flick mold, Ginny is played by Anna Kendrick, the young actress whose remarkable poise and versatility made her castmates in Todd Graff's Camp look like rank amateurs by comparison; she more than fulfills her promise here, nailing the character's forthright duplicity and verbose, supersonic monologues. Blitz, for his part, continually steers the movie in unexpected directions, which can be both exhilarating and maddening — his determination not to succumb to cliché pays hilarious dividends throughout, but also makes Rocket Science feel more like a collection of sharp sketches than a bona fide film. And, of course, it goes all sappy at the end. Knock that shit off, comic filmmakers! Leave the life lessons to Lasse Hallström, if you please. — Mike D'Angelo
