Rocket Science

Plot synopsis:
Hal Hefner is a fifteen-year-old student of Plainsboro, New Jersey with a pronounced stutter. His older brother Earl is an obsessive-compulsive kleptomaniac, his father Doyle has recently walked out on the family after a heated argument, and his mother Juliet has begun to date the father of his school friend, Heston.
Hal is riding the school bus home one day when he is approached by Ginny Ryerson, the articulate, competitive star of the debate team. She urges him to join her and replace her former partner, Ben Wekselbaum, who has dropped out of high school after falling silent mid-speech and losing the New Jersey State High School Policy Debate Championship. Though Hal initially declines, he finds himself besotted with Ginny and agrees to be her partner. Hal and Ginny begin to study for the upcoming tournament and form arguments on either side of whether the federal government should support the teaching of sexual abstinence in public schools. When Hal finds himself unable to talk during a practice debate, he runs out of the room and hides in the janitorial closet, where Ginny joins him. Hal kisses her hopefully, and they make out, but she subsequently falls out of contact with him. Ginny's parents assure him that she is confident with the work they have already completed and that she will meet him on the day of the debate.
On the day of the tournament, Coach Lumbly tells the debate team that Ginny has transferred to Townsend Prep for the remainder of her senior year and that Hal will be paired with Heston for the day. Struggling with his speech and his stutter, Hal calls his therapist, who suggests that he sing his speech or talk with a foreign accent. Hal and Heston finish the day without much success, while Ginny wins a trophy for First Place as an Individual Speaker, which inexplicably goes missing. Coach Lumbly asks Hal to leave the team, telling him that Ginny had never planned to debate as his partner and had only recruited him as a cruel joke to damage the school's chances of winning. He breaks into Earl's bedroom and takes a bottle of stolen tequila, then rides with Heston to his friend Lewis's house, who lives across the street from Ginny. A drunken Hal drags Lewis's mother's cello across the street and throws it through Ginny's window just as she is arriving home with her new teammate, Ram.
Later in the year, Hal's mother breaks up with Heston's father, and Hal decides to seek out Ginny and return her trophy, which he stole. She rejects his apology, and he travels to Trenton—the "Big City"—to find Ben, Ginny's former debate partner. Hal convinces Ben to debate with him, and they register as a home-schooled team in the upcoming Policy Debate Championships. In order to overcome his stutter, Ben helps Hal to write his entire speech to the tune of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic". During the tournament, Hal is interrupted in the middle of his song-speech by Coach Lumbly and a Debate Official who disqualify Hal and Ben on the grounds that neither of them is home-schooled. Ben is satisfied with their efforts, but Hal finds Ginny before leaving. He insists that one day will be his day, while she tells him that it was not easy for her to betray him as he walks off, having gained a sense of confidence. He spends the evening at a nearby beach, and when his father picks him up, Hal tries to tell him that life and love "shouldn't be rocket science", although he is unable to say the phrase "rocket science" due to his stutter.

Tags: revenge, psychedelic, cruelty, romantic

Review:
The film's mood pushes the limit of tongue- in-cheek, and it is certainly felt as a comedy because after all, the premise is a stuttering boy joining a debate team, but despite all the hilarious non sequiturs and plot-driven laughs, I take that essential theme to heart.
Hal Heffner is an innocently gawky young high school kid, portrayed in a should-be career-making performance by Reece Thompson, who has a severe stuttering problem and experiences a change of events that he finds to have had a tempestuous emotional effect on him that I'm just dying to give away but won't.
Watching this film, we watch this naive stuttering boy crippled by inhibitions and shyness mature, reaching the extremes of anger, confusion, love, intellectual growth, and introspection.There are plenty of movies about high school, and they're full of comeuppance, humor targeted for that age, discovery of sex, et cetera, but there is very very rarely a movie like Rocket Science, a movie about that particular time in your life when you were just growing into yourself and you didn't even know it, and you hardly look back at that time because of the unawareness of self at that point and, hopefully, the growth since then.
The acting is top notch as well as the soundtrack, writing, editing, and photography.I'll start with the general story:Hal Heffner (Reece Thompson) is just an ordinary , no frills high-school kid who happens to have a severe stutter.
Here though, as unrealistically hyper-articulate as this high school debate team, indie-romance styled dramedy feels, Blitz possesses the rare ability to seamlessly merge it with a whole bunch of tender awkwardness and create something far superior then a wit-fest.
Encapsulating this neurotic whimsy is the gifted Thompson (amongst other very well casted performances) who like a younger, more accessible Jason Schwartzman, takes an annoyingly exploited trait of stuttering unease and mines it into a tender, thoughtful coming of age characterization that should inspire even the most cynical of introverts.Littered with scene after scene of a simply far more perceptive quirk then what Hollywood's continuously dumbed-down interpretations of independent film used to be, Rocket Science blasts off with personality and style to spare..
If you want to see a movie with intelligent dialogue with a good message and great acting, go and see Rocket Science.
The entire time I was watching rocket science, I was gob smacked by the performances of the entire cast, but in particular Anna Kendrick and Nicholas D'Agosto.
I think it's difficult to portray a character that you hate and love quite like Anna has done in this movie, and even now..
Literacy will be required to appreciate this movie.This has to be the best dialog in any film ever made with a stutterer as a central character.
But I did think of it as a companion piece to "Welcome to the Dollhouse." Both set in NJ, and both with central characters at the bottom of their school social ranking, and coping with their realities better than one would think.I particularly liked the relationship between adults and kids in this film.
Case in point - Hal Hefner, a fifteen year old attending Plainsboro High School in New Jersey, who is trying to make sense of growing up but is burdened by a stutter so debilitating that he cannot even tell the cafeteria worker at school that he wants pizza instead of fish.
Rocket Science, the second feature by Jeffrey Blitz (Spellbound), who overcame his own stuttering disability, is a teen comedy that poignantly captures the painful loneliness of adolescence.While on paper Rocket Science sounds like other coming of age films such as Election and Rushmore, it manages to capture something unique and very special about being a teenager without having to rely on grossness, stereotypes, or implausible situations.
Surprisingly however, Hal is recruited by top debater Ginny Ryerson (Anna Kendrick) to be her debate partner after her former partner Ben Wekselbaum (Nicholas D'Agosto) went blank at last year's championship match.Ginny, a charming but overly aggressive super student, tells Hal that "deformed people" make good competitors because they have so much anger to express.
Partly out of revenge and partly out of desperation, he turns to failed debater Ben Wekselbaum, now working in Trenton in a cleaners, to be his new partner after Ginny transfers to a different school.
Instead he relies on the inner strength of the characters to see them through, not on a contrived narrative.While there are some predictably oddball characters like Philosophy major Lionel (Jonah Hill), pint-sized Josh (Lewis Garrles) who spies on Ginny for him (and models her bra that he has stolen), and an older couple who practice the Kama Sutra and play Violent Femmes "Blister In The Sun" duets on the cello and piano, Rocket Science has few false notes.
High school can be a painful time, so to expect some Disney version of perfect, perky kids, who all look like teen models, is downright unrealistic.
Particularly liked 'Earl' and, of course, Hal, who managed to portray everything from the frustration stutterers feel, to the sheer jubilation of being able to vocalize, even if only occasionally.The characters were engaging.The cinematography gave the film a sense of movement through time that dramatically raised the stakes for the characters.
Extremely good soundtrack that perfectly matches the tone.The ending was realistic.Bad: The film moves a little quickly in places, leaving it easy to miss key aspects of the plot.The main cello scene was the best portrayal of everyday anger that I have ever seen.The film has one scene that veers slightly too far into 'Artsiness for Artsines's sake' territory, and had me cringing.
More could have been done with the little transvestite boy; an extremely interesting actor underused.If the ending was intended to show Hal accepting both himself and his stutter and thus finding his voice, why did the final scene show him struggling.
The exchange says more about the mother, aptly played by Lisbeth Bartlett, and her appetite for the exotic than the Asian-ness of her guests.Later in the film, the protagonist and Heston pair up in a speech competition, and employing a technique suggested by his school counselor to quell the stammer, Hal decides to affect an accent.
Jeffrey Blitz creates something as precise as something Wes Anderson put on film, without the elements becoming ornamental.Yes, there are jokes in "Rocket Science," but it's not the joke-gag-joke rabbit punches of Apatow and his bunch and none of that numbing repetitive dissonance of their adult language spoken by what we're supposed to believe are goofy high school kids.
I've just been burned too many times by movies like this, movies that are apparently made to cause people to suffer, and I'm beginning to wonder if the nation's movie critics are getting together and having a good laugh at all the people who they've sent to the cinematic abattoir of awfulness by recommending painful snoozers like Rocket Science..
Billed as 'Election' like and the first feature from the director of 'Spellbound', the documentary that followed American students through the harrowing spelling bee competitions, 'Rocket Science' is quite frankly disappointing.
I haven't bothered to read all of the other comments but I'm sure it must have been stated before -- this is a completely mediocre comedy that is simply yet another attempt by Hollywood to ride on the coattails of much better films like "Rushmore" and "Napoleon Dynamite." Whereas those films had one or two quirky characters, the hack director of this film decided to up the ante and make ALL but one or two characters "quirky." Was this an attempt to quadruple the laughs?
If so, he failed miserably.I was thinking about a great teenage comedy film from the late '70s/early'80s - "My Bodyguard" which carried a similar theme of a young, loser kid trying to find his place in the world.
I don't believe this film has any chance of winning any Oscars, and it def was not a highlight of the year for me, id advise anyone watching this movie, to be prepared for dragged out scenes, and at some points in the movie, unwatchable acting.
You don't think you're watching actors act in Rocket Science, these young people achieve a level of reality in their work that you don't often get.They're given good support by the rest of the cast which centers around Thompson's dysfunctional family.
You'll also like Steve Park who moves in with Bartlett and her kids and his budding young gay son, Aaron Yoo.Rocket Science is a really well done piece of film making, John Waters would be proud..
The ineffectuality of the pasty-legged teacher, the mixed genius for nasty/sweet of the motive force female, the search for love of our main man and just about everyone else in the piece, excepting the mother who will spoil her own life again and again, the endearing Korean boyfriend who moves in and seems to really attach to the kids, the sweet/authoritarian hopeful debate coach, the Summa Theologica kid, and that beachside Pizza sign come together to make a very satisfying movie.
First, as many others have pointed out, the people behind the excellent movie Rushmore should sue this writer/director for plagiarism.It is cool seeing Anna Kendrick in an early (2007) role, but you know how some movies show where the main character ends up in a year?
Seriously.It was one thing for comedies made in the 1980s to show obsessive, even violent behavior as entertainment, but watching this movie in 2018 I felt like it should be renamed "Making of a School Shooter.".
Ben Wekselbaum and Ginny Ryerson (Anna Kendrick) are fast-talking high school debate teammates in Plainsboro, New Jersey.
I found 'Rocket Science' the way I've found several wonderful little indie films that nobody seems to know about: the sale bin at Blockbuster.Now I know why there were so many copies in there.The cast is chock-full of actors ranging from competent to spectacular; the script is fairly reeking of obnoxious characters with stereotypical indie-style quirks.Exception: the character of Hal is generally a good kid with a lot of heart and was played well by Reece Thompson.
The stutter was endearing at first, then pitiful, then it just got annoying near the end of the movie when it finally dawns on the audience that Nicholas D'Agosto's character doesn't actually help him conquer it.The movie starts out pretty okay.
So many rancid indie films are shot with shaky-cam or heavy shadows to emphasize the realism; Rocket Science makes unbelievable use of white light to the point of it being blinding, especially in the school scenes.
They chart the lift that debating--the single most educational endeavor in which a student can participate-- can give to those who learn to wage warfare with rapid-fire words.The film opens with promise--the promise us that our protagonist, the stuttering Hal Hefner, played by Reece Thompson, along with his even better partner, the perfectly cast Anna Kendrick, will rise above his prior limitations.But halfway through, the movie loses its direction and wanders aimlessly.
Along the way we can enjoy what Blitz gives Hal...a high school speech counselor who only knows about hyper-active kids; Hal's continuing battle to deal with the choice of pizza or fish in the cafeteria; Ginny Ryerson's neighbors, a couple who work through their marriage issues with a cello, a piano and a copy of the illustrated Kama Sutra; the debate technique of "spreading," or cramming a breathless, fast-talking debate position into 30 seconds (ten if you're responding).
Rocket Science is a good-natured, good-humored movie about a kid with a stammer who is willing to try for the sake of love.
This is not a happy story, i sat through all the frustrating bits in the movies, putting my shirt over my head whenever he tried to debate with his enormous stutter, thinking its okay, because I'm gonna see some scenes at the end where he has finally lost his stutter.
Maybe i had the wrong idea when i watched this movie, i was convinced from start till perhaps the last scene, that i was going to see an inspiring transformation, where i would no longer feel sorry for the kid, and that marred my view on the film.
I felt at the end of 'Rocket Science' that the kid was never going to get rid of his stutter, and when did his last debate and he turned to the judges and said 'Im killing it right?' that he was in fact, not killing it, he sucked, you can't debate in a musical tone, there was no growth there.
Hal Hefner, a stuttering innocent living in a half-broken home; Ben Wexelbaum, a pressured prodigy trying to break free of the life that has had him lost for so long; and Ginny Ryerson, a using overachiever who lets nothing get in her way of getting what she wants.
It's a movie about a little, annoying twit with a stutter who gets to help a girl out on the debate team.
The boy is Hal (Reece Thompson, just annoying as hell in this.) The girl is Ginny (Anna Kendrick, also pretty bad in this.) Together they form an annoying, stupid predictable relationship.
I realize they can't all be gems but the latest offering had me grinding my teeth in deep hatred.Hal Hefner (newcomer Thompson) is a NJ teen who has a difficult life: namely his father has just left his family to fend for themselves as if he was going onto a better job position instead of total abandonment for no good reason (well maybe the mother is a bit of a clinger), and more notably a persistent, heart-breaking stutter that has made him a complete social misfit at his high school (and life in general).Add to the mix debate team extraordinairre Ginny Ryerson (newbie Kendrick), whose hyperkinetic speech is an obnoxious, grating device that inspires her to force hapless Hal to join the club in spite of his woeful absence of speech in general.Ginny has her reasons: namely she was robbed the previous year of the state championship when her partner Ben Wekselbaum (D'Agostino) suddenly froze in the midst of his patter ruining their chances altogether and sending him into self-exiled seclusion.While documentary filmmaker Blitz is said to have based this alleged comedy on his own childhood battle with stuttering, you could have fooled me in this highly mean-spirited, ugly and too-proud-of-itself attitude that I immediately disliked it from the get go and the cutesy touches (Hal's creepy friend's parents use musical therapy with a cello and piano recital of the Violent Femmes' "Blister in The Sun"), the fact NJ (my home state) is once again a one-note joke (and um, shot in BALTIMORE!!!), and namely no likable characters (nope even Hal becomes a real jerk in the long run).
And even if they threw out all that, they should've reversed the father scene (although they should have made it better, he was the only bad character in the film) and the pizza scene, and ended it with Hal flawlessly asking for a piece of pizza.
Jeffrey Blitz and his Rocket Science don't measure up, but they do provide moments of insight into teenage angst, in a decidedly figurative way that saves it from obscurity.Hal Hefner (Reece Daniel Thompson) stutters but enters a statewide high school debate contest to prove a number of things I'm not even sure I understand.
Rocket Science focus on Hal Hefner, a kid who suffers with a very terrible stutter.
While the movie is quite clearly getting so much from Election (one of the best satires of all time), it really is in truth, how so much works in today's high schools and society.
Despite Hal's shortcomings, he is determined to make it big in the school debating team after falling in love with one of their more nubile super-brains (the phenomenally speed-talking Anna Kendrick), and the story begins with its ending, in depicting someone for whom the hopeful journey was everything, a strong similarity to 'Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner' before going back to show us the run-up, taking in D.I.V.O.R.C.E., the Kama Sutra, the Mystery of Life.
But fortunately this is not a main stream silly movie: a stutterer cannot even be recruited for a debate team, thus Hal is out of the competition.
Maybe that's why I like the quirky, coming-of-age opus, "Rocket Science" and relate to its' hero, Hal Hefner (gawky but likable Reece Daniel Thompson of "Assassination Of A High School President" and "Daydream Nation"), who can't pronounce "pizza" when trying to order a slice, getting fish or some other alternative.Along with his verbal handicap, Hal has to deal with parents being separated (the dad moved out because the mother's an emotional wreck!) and his kleptomaniac bully of a brother Earl (Vincent Piazza, also of "President") while living in New Jersey.
The opening and early part of the movie is OK (if you like that sort of thing) and we are introduced to Hal Hefner (Reece Thompson), a lad with a severe speech impediment.
Sometimes Earl actually is supportive but, most of the time, he delights in bullying Hal.The whole movie is centered around the New Jersey State High School Debating Championships which, I guess, tends to feature what many viewers might call "geeks" or "Nerds" - those students who are in the upper intellectual echelons.
After far too long, I was beginning to wonder where the movie was going until Ginny Ryerson (Anna Kendrick) and Hal's paths cross.
Although I couldn't help wondering why Hal even considered the invitation knowing his own limitations - maybe, like me, he expected love to work a miracle!
Although the actors weren't necessarily chosen because of this trait, they do it very well.Reece Thompson is arguably the main actor as Hal Hefner, the meek high school kid with a bad stuttering problem.