She’s Out of My League
Directed by Jim Field Smith
Starring Jay Baruchel, Alice Eve, T.J. Miller, Lindsay Sloane
**½

Were it not over-edited and over-scored to within an inch of its life, She’s Out of My League could have been a very charming and very down-to-earth romantic comedy.  As it is, League offers a few modest pleasures, but it’s hard not to spend the majority of its 105-minute runtime picturing the movie it might have been with more conviction and a lot less studio-enforced gloss.

Chief among the aforementioned pleasures is the star turn by Jay Baruchel, a former member of Judd Apatow’s entourage of young funny guys (he scored his big break came as the lead on the writer/director’s 2001 sitcom Undeclared) finally striking out on his own like such other Apatow alums as Seth Rogen and Jason Segel.  What’s interesting about Baruchel is that he has a screen presence that sets him apart from his peers.  He’s a nebbish like Rogen, but comes across as smarter and less blustery.  And like Segel, he’s often awkward around other people, but never to the point where he seems on the verge of a full-scale nervous breakdown.  Perhaps the best way to describe Baruchel is that he’s just–to use the old cliché–a nice, normal guy.  That makes him something of an oddity in many contemporary comedies where a streak of meanness (or at the very least, self-entitlement) is built into the hero’s DNA.  In contrast, there doesn’t seem to be a malicious bone in Baruchel’s body; even when he finally snaps and tells a group of characters to go fuck themselves, he does it in the politest possible way.

Baruchel’s charm is essential to the plot of She’s Out of My League, which revolves around the supposedly impossible love affair between Kirk (Baruchel), a put-upon TSA employee, and Molly (Alice Eve), a drop-dead gorgeous event planner.  According to the movie’s version of romance, this relationship simply can’t survive because on a 1-10 scale of attractiveness, Kirk supposedly ranks as a 5 while Molly is a “hard 10.”  And yet, the two of them seem perfectly happy together–she’s attracted to his kindness and generosity, while he appreciates her drive, ambition and, of course, all-around hotness.  It helps that Baruchel and Eve share a natural, easygoing chemistry; it’s not at all difficult to buy them as a couple, despite the movie’s repeated attempts to prove otherwise.

Of course, because Molly and Kirk seem like such a great couple from the get-go, the movie has to work overtime to throw obstacles in their path, among them Kirk’s cruel ex-girlfriend (Lindsay Sloane in a thankless, borderline misogynistic role), Molly’s preening ex-boyfriend (Geoff Stults), their respective best friends (a trio of Apatow-like frat boys for Kirk and a sarcastic brunette for Molly) and Kirk’s own self-esteem issues.  The latter hurdle is the only one that really makes any dramatic sense, but screenwriters Sean Anders and John Morris don’t really know how to deal with it in any substantive way and instead resolve it with a monologue that’s lifted almost word for word from Kevin Smith’s great Chasing Amy.  The writers also continually dance around the issue that’s really at the heart of the movie, namely class.  While wage slave Kirk lives at home with his buffoonish family, while Molly’s substantial income allows her to afford her own beautifully appointed apartment without any aid from her equally well-off parents.  Although this hopefully isn’t the film’s intention, She’s Out of My League often comes dangerously close to equating physical ugliness with a lower standard of living.  A bolder comedy would have explored how Molly and Kirk’s different backgrounds impact their relationship, but this one is content to simply use it as a way to score cheap, easy laughs.

Directed by first-time feature filmmaker Jim Field Smith, She’s Out of My League disappointingly follows the stylistic template of every contemporary romantic comedy, which means lots of musical montages, an abundance of postcard-like shots of the film’s host city (in this case, Pittsburgh) and a climactic declaration of love in a public place.  Really, the only thing that distinguishes the movie from any other generic rom-com are the two leads, who create a sweet, believable romance that deserves a better movie.

She’s Out of My League opens in theaters today.