The Journal

Issue date: 8/30/07 Section: Lifestyle

Media Credit: Photo courtesy of Picturehouse Reece Thompson rides the bus with Anna Kendrick in this month's 'Rocket Science,' which played in the Winifred Moore Auditorium Aug. 22.

In Jeffrey Blitz's debut narrative feature "Rocket Science," many themes arise in similarity to the director's earlier documentary effort "Spellbound," (2002) in what seems to be an attempt to enmesh the trials of authentic coming-of-agers and those of an imagined reality that comes to resemble the overdeveloped sensibility of Wes Anderson.

The challenges that come afoot during one's secondary schooling are legion, and filmmakers who mirror their own experiences onto their characters (John Hughes and his "Sixteen Candles" kick-started this tradition) are never without hard-to-watch storylines.

The embarrassments of protagonist Hal Hefner (Reece Thompson) are likely the kind that Molly Ringwald would have herself had to endure if she were of the opposite sex. Hefner, played by the television-based actor Reece Thompson, is preyed upon by the school's top debater Ginny Ryerson (Anna Kendrick) in an attempt to win back her pride after a humiliating defeat at the previous year's state championship. Her whiz partner Ben Wekselbaum (Nicholas D'Agosto) comes upon the realization as he is closing in on the title that the whole thing is a pointless charade, and suddenly stops mid-sentence, effectively giving the trophy to the opposing school.

The quizzical thing of the story is, Hefner is a seemingly incurable stutterer, equipped with what he deems a wry sense of humor, making for some of the most discomforting dialogue sequences in recent teen flick memory.

Blitz is trying to tell us something momentous here about the importance of humanity's capability for speech, in that it doesn't matter how many 15-letter words you can blurt out in perfect sibilance in front of large crowds, but rather what you do with the knowledge you gain and the words you do - eventually - speak.

At first it is easy to think Blitz is simply jumping on the awkward bandwagon, joining the likes of "Napoleon Dynamite," "Rushmore" and others, in order to get a ticket to Hollywood, and he may very well be. Who knows? A closer look at Hefner though may reveal an impetus somewhat less shallow.

Continued...

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