Rocket Science.

"Rocket Science joins a long line of movies about teenage outcasts struggling to find their place in the world; two years ago the prize entry was Thumbsucker," writes Newsweek's David Ansen. "But this sharp and painfully funny coming-of-age story - a hyperarticulate comedy about an inarticulate boy - manages to avoid just about every cliché of the genre.... Writer-director Jeffrey Blitz previously made the irresistible 2002 documentary Spellbound, about kids in spelling bees. Rocket Science is his first dramatic feature, and it has a quirky literary voice all its own—self-conscious, but so sure-footed it earns its right to preen now and then."

"Blitz has a knack for creating (or in the case of his documentary, finding and presenting) young characters we really care for, and then sending them, and us, into desperate, gripping situations," writes Matt Singer at IFC News. "These are movies you feel, right down to your toes."

Updated through 8/11.

"[T]his Amerindie's excesses of quirk seem hormonal rather than Sundance Lab-engineered," suggests Mark Asch in the L Magazine. "How else to explain the sight of a kid leafing through his parents' Kama Sutra while, downstairs, mom and dad play Violent Femmes songs on cello and piano?"

"What makes the first fiction feature from documentarian Blitz persuasive is its late-film detour from the inspirational niche-sports genre to something altogether unexpected - and the winning lead performance of Reece Daniel Thompson as Hal Hefner, a bashful teen coaxed into helping his school earn some payback for last year's debate-team fiasco," writes Jim Ridley in the Voice.

Blitz is on ReelerTV; and Gina Piccalo lunches with him for the Los Angeles Times.

Earlier: "Sundance. Rocket Science."

Update: "Quirky, quirky, quirky goes Rocket Science. Round, round, round roll my eyes," sighs Nick Schager at Slant. "Blitz has little to say about his themes that couldn't easily fit on a Hallmark card."

Update, 8/8: Michael Guillén talks with Blitz and Thompson for SF360.

Updates, 8/9: "Thompson's stutter as Hal just seems precious," remarks Armond White in the New York Press. "It's indicative of the self-pitying narcissism found in so many indie youth movies - from Donnie Darko to anything starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt."

"Due to fine performances by Thompson and Vincent Piazza as older brother Earl, Rocket Science nails a number of details crucial in portraying the comic absurdity of awkward adolescence," writes Michael Joshua Rowin at Reverse Shot. "Blitz takes great care to avoid obvious generic clichés - if you're expecting a triumphant showdown, you'll be sorely disappointed - but this only pushes the film into other, newly minted traps."

Hey, Jeffrey Blitz is today's pinch hitter at the Reeler, where Vadim Rizov writes, "Rocket Science is not a 'Sundance movie.' Yes, it premiered at this year's festival, and yes, it's a quirky, heart-warming story about misfits, and yes it is writer/director Jeffrey Blitz's follow-up to the quintessential nerd-doc, Spellbound. But Rocket Science never curdles into the intolerable realm where would-be 'indies' like Garden State torment and browbeat audiences into submission with a combination of offbeat jokes and overt sentimentality. This isn't the tic-ridden posing and preening of well-heeled actors trading lower paychecks for ostensible street cred. The oddballs are kids; they can't help it."

Updates, 8/10: Rocket Science "borrows a few plot elements from Election and much of its sensibility from Wes Anderson, yet still somehow comes across as fresh and original," writes Mike D'Angelo at Nerve.

"[O]nce you crack the self-conscious veneer, there's no doubt there's an openhearted movie underneath," writes Salon's Stephanie Zacharek.

"Your affection for Rocket Science will depend on the depth of your identification with Hal's angst and the degree to which you regard high school as the ultimate microcosm of American life," writes Stephen Holden in the New York Times.

Updates, 8/11: "It will probably take a few more viewings to confirm it, but Rocket Science might belong up there with the best of recent coming of age sagas - in the company of such instant classics as Wes Anderson's Rushmore and Terry Zwigoff's Ghost World," writes Marcy Dermansky.

"While Rocket Science does get a lot of things right, it's hard not to label it as 'just another Sundance film' - the kind that's amusing to watch, but easily forgettable," writes Erik Davis at Cinematical, where he also talks with Blitz.

"The world could probably live without another quirky high-school comedy about a misfit's coming of age," concedes Scott Tobias at the AV Club, but Rocket Science "carves out a place for itself anyway, because it's so determined to undercut expectations and access the feelings of a stuttering boy who can't express them on his own."

Posted by dwhudson at August 7, 2007 11:45 AM