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Rocket Science
Picturehouse, 101mins, TBA
Written and Directed
by Jeffrey Blitz
I f
you have a stutter or a stammer, nothing is harder than public
speaking, much less debate. Jeffrey Blitz, who directed the
documentary “Spellbound” has decided to change genres for a moment
and do a fictional film about love and disablilty.
Hal Hefner (Reece Daniel Thompson) has a major stuttering problem,
but we don't start with him. We start with the New Jersey debate
championships, where Ben Wekselbaum (Nichola D'Agosto) and Ginny
Ryerson (Anna Kendrick) are about to take the the whole ball of
wax, when Ben decides, for no reason that we can discern, goes
silent and blows the entire thing. Ginny goes about looking for a
replacement, and finds Hal.
Hal's voice is not his only problem, his parents (Dennis O'Hare and
Lisbeth Bartlett) are breaking up and his brother Earl (Vincent
Piazza) is a creep who like to beat up on our hero. When Ginny finds
him, he's a lost cause, and but when even though he can't get the
words out, the rest of his body is fine, soon, he's got an
adolescent crush on his mentor, and things go from bad to great back
to bad, and then our hero has an idea.
The whole thing is a bit too cute by half, but, it's fun, in an off
beat way, and the plot is actually a bit of a surprise. The
supporting cast is actually rather good, especially Josh Kay as one
of Ginny's neighbors. What we have here is one of those little
cinematic miracles that is either going to be an unexpected hit, or
vanish without a trace. Hopefully, it'll be the former.
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