Directed by Jeffrey Blitz
With Reece Daniel Thompson, Anna Kendrick, Nicholas D’Agosto, Vincent Piazza, Margo Martindale, Aaron Yoo, Josh Kay, Stephen Park, Maury Ginsberg, Utkarsh Ambudkar, Denis O’Hare, Lisbeth Bartlett
Website at www.picturehouse.com
Hal Hefner (Reece Thompson) attends a high school that prizes its debate team the way some schools prize a top sports team. The coolest guys and the most knockout girls participate, talking at blinding speed. Hal confines himself to that corner of the high-school world where observation is safer than getting involved, thinking that you can’t get hurt if no one knows you’re there. His family doesn’t offer much help, and his older brother Earl (Vincent Piazza), while pretty lost himself, gives Hal a lot of bad advice. Oh, and one more thing — Hal stutters.As he takes solace in his usual secret place (the janitor’s closet), Hal is attacked by debate superstar Virginia Ryerson (Anna Kendrick). She is ferociously competitive and WILL NOT let the debate team lose another state championship. She’s decided obstacles help hone the best debaters, so Hal and his stutter are perfect for her purposes. Since Ginny’s as attractive as she is aggressive, Hal decides her plan is worth trying. (from the filmfest-guide)
Next to John Water’s pick of the year, the 3-D movie pick and the silent film with live music another of our must-do traditions of the Maryland Film Festival is the closing night party with a screening of a movie that was shot entirely or in large parts in Baltimore or Maryland. This year’s closing night screening was Rocket Science, a film about high-school loves and dreams, nerds and friends, debates and overcoming fears and limitations. The story plays in Trenton, New Jersey, but it was predominantly filmed in the Baltimore area.
The story seems simple, but it was very well written and brilliantly told with many unexpected moments and twists that kept you interested from beginning to end and that made every single minute very enjoyable. All the actors were outstanding and impressive, creating convincing stutter problems, incredibly fast paced debate speeches or bringing the characters to life in a very fluent and natural way. Overall quite a fun movie.
Back in my German highschool days I never witnessed and had no idea there were debate competitions in which the candidates squeeze whole books of arguments into a speech of a few minutes. I have never seen or even heard of them before and couldn’t believe it wasn’t just a fun fictional subject for a movie. I still find it very fascinating. America never fails to surprise me…very impressive, I have to express a special praise to the actors.
I just looked at the IMDB user ratings for this film and was again shocked at how other people voted. There are unbelievable 45 votes (of 160) with a rating of 1 and 2! That’s outrageous and insane—nothing about this film deserves such a bad rating. The unbelievable amount of hate and unfairness of people really sickens me. And every day there seem to be more of those in our society, not only the movie database.
