Rocket Science: Critic Reviews

Why filter such a personal story through the attitudinal tics of Wes Anderson and Napoleon Dynamite, especially if you're going to do it with about one-third the skill?

Tender but hardheaded.

It isn't funny; it isn't touching; there's a screamingly annoying and supercilious voiceover-narration, and all its dramatic ideas are bafflingly unfinished and unresolved.

Smart, witty and blessedly unpredictable.

Writer-director Jeffrey Blitz brings wit and pathos to the story of a compulsive stutterer.

Rocket Science not only feels our collective pain, it makes us laugh wickedly at the memories.

Honest and surprisingly lucid at its core.

A quirky comedy-drama that gets the bulk of its humor from the well-placed non sequitur. It never seems to be going where you think it is, and that includes its oddly endearing dialogue.

Borrowing from too many movies to count, Rocket Science botches that brew in an unwieldy slew of adolescent-angst cliches.

Buoyed by a script rife with poetry, a handful of dynamic performances and Eef Barzelay's near-perfect score, Rocket Science mildly shames the potty-mouthed Superbad. And I liked Superbad.

It may gross as little as Welcome to the Dollhouse or as much as Clueless, but whichever it does, it's in the same league.

Jeffrey Blitz's Rocket Science doesn't quite work but is worth seeing anyway.

Quietly written and convincingly played, this coming-of-age story mines its rueful laughs from a thick vein of performance anxiety, in both senses of the term.

Blitz captures the melancholy, the rage, the wackiness and drama of adolescence, and he gets winning performances out of his young stars.

A strong contender to become a student classic.

Rocket Science flies beyond the standard teen preoccupations, moving into territory that combines humor and eccentricity with fragile hope and ambition, making for a film that embraces every awkward angle of adolescence.

All of the acting is first-rate, but Thompson is fantastic. He makes Hal both sympathetic and hilarious, never giving in to self-pity but, in a refreshing take, not above the occasional scream (or cheer).

This unusually voluble comedy is as eloquent about love, self-realization and adolescent angst as its protagonist is endearingly tongue-tied.

This summer's designated Sundance crowd-pleaser, Rocket Science, is a quirkily disarming high-school comedy that calculatingly follows in the footsteps of Napoleon Dynamite, Election and Rushmore.

[Director] Blitz has succumbed to that most pernicious of Sundance afflictions: pandemic quirkiness.

A smart, funny, unpredictable film...a more accurate reflection of high-school life than is usually portrayed.

Self-consciously quirky on the outside, this gentle teenage fable has an affecting, openhearted core.

The problem with Rocket Science is that the character at the center of the drama isn't very energetic or, truth be told, interesting. This makes it difficult at times to remain engaged in the unfolding tale.

Launches into the audience-pleasing stratosphere with a brainy, unpredictable story orbit.

Blitz continues to make a case for himself as a filmmaker with rich, realistic stories to tell.