She's Out of My League

Guest Writer: Andrew Roble

As a guest writer to this site, I would like to thank the powers that be for giving me this opportunity to spread my wealth of knowledge about all things entertainment. Everyone that reads this site should thank them. But seriously, I’m just a dork that enjoys watching movies and giving my opinions on them. So that’s what I’m going to do with regards to She’s Out of My League, a movie that I saw last night.

I have discussed with J.D. previously about movies that have a guy that gets with a girl completely inexplicably. We’ve (well, really I) have decided to call it the Knocked Up Corollary. Knocked Up, as many of you know, had Seth Rogan and Katherine Heigl getting together. I mean, seriously? I really cannot say in good conscience that this movie did not violate this. Go ahead, Google Jay Baruchel and then Google Alice Eve. OK, done? Admit it, if you saw them together as an exclusive couple, you’d wonder what exactly was going on?

But, that being said, I thought that they did as good of a job as they could, all things considered. The movie itself is a gimmick. The title tells the story. It’s the story of a guy, Jay Baruchel, starring as Kirk, somehow ending up with a girl by the name of Molly (Alice Eve). That seems unlikely from the very beginning, so going into the movie, I knew that there’d have to be a very believable reason for them getting together.

Was it VERY believable? It was pretty close, if nothing else. It’s a movie, so therefore, they have to make it more interesting than what would probably happen in real life. They have to sell tickets, not try to replicate exact what exactly happens in real life. Then again, as one of my Creative Writing professors told me about writing romance: “Think of what is the most logical thing for the characters to do, and then do the opposite. The trouble is that your audience will say that that’s unrealistic, but in reality, it is the most down-to-earth situation that could happen.”

From there, the plot was fairly standard affair. I don’t want to give anything away, but if you’ve seen enough movies of this genre, you know what will happen. There will be trouble, from all sides, and both will begin to second-guess what exactly they’re doing. Personally, I usually find myself wanting to scream at the guy for second-guessing, but maybe that’s just me.

The “trouble from all sides,” predictably enough, comes from the friends and family of both sides. All of them were fairly clichéd. The girl having her rich, snooty family with a friend that’s completely cynical is seen over and over again. The guy having his obnoxious friends and family that is completely unruly that they make him look even more pathetic than previously thought possible. Personally, I thought that Kirk’s family in this movie should have been cut from the movie all together. They served a purpose in that they had some scenes that were to spark hilarity, but personally I did not find any scene of which they were in to be particularly humorous.

The movie also “balanced” the clever, witty humor that the movie did have with some nonsense slapstick humor. The kind of slapstick humor that could only happen in a movie, where the characters cause thousands of dollars worth of damage and/or cause life-threatening harm to an extra in the movie and they never face any repercussions. They do it because it’s supposed to be funny for that one second and then the audience is supposed to forget about it. Maybe I’m just cynical.

All and all, it was a movie that I found myself enjoying the full way through. As much as I’ve said negativity about it, I found the plot to be oddly compelling. As aforementioned, there was some clever humor and I particularly liked Kirk’s friends at times, clichéd as they were. But clichés are clichés for a reason and that is because they work and people like them. Ultimately, I do not regret the $6 that I paid to go see the movie and that is why I think the movie was good.