There's something special about a good, clean What If? premise. You can't make a good film with a bad premise, no matter how much energy, talent or money you throw at it. Conversely, I think it's equally tough to make a bad film with a great premise. The director's job is basically to bring the best elements together, and then stay out of the way of the story. I am happy to write that writer/director Jeffrey Blitz did both jobs well: he wrote a great story, and then didn't screw it up by abandoning his vision or attacking it with unnecessary elements or glitz.
Rocket Science is quite simple: Hal, a smart, likable outcast with a debilitating stutter gets pushed into joining the state-championship-bound debate team in Plainsboro, New Jersey. Rocket Science is also quite complex. This same engaging reject, played flawlessly by Reece Daniel Thompson, has other problems, too. Men keep leaving his Mom, his brother is a bit deranged (albeit an honorable kleptomaniac), his speech therapist wishes Hal was hyperactive so he could better cure him, and his new girlfriend is a manipulative, overachieving brainiac with heavy debate team baggage. It's complex without being complicated and the story unfolds with some expectations, some surprises, but always a heavy dose of wit and sensitivity.
This film derives its power from the humor and warmth created by the idiosyncrasies and quirks of its characters. They are all really human, really true, and really weird. There's the speech therapist teacher who sits in his underwear and solves a Rubik's cube while advising Hal to abandon his dreams. There's a bizarre sure-to-be-sex-addict neighbor kid who insists on educating Hal about the world of bras. Marital Musical Therapy, Drunken Cello Vandalism and Janitorial Closet Reprieves are just a few of the multitudinous bits and pieces that are woven into this tapestry of alien-yet-familiar terrain. The jokes are all there and the punchlines come with brilliant editing, subtle, poignant acting, and assured directing.
I found the voice over narration a bit problematic. In the beginning it lended to the story and added a note of poetry, but it drifted in and out of the film, taking me out of the experience of the story, and by the end it basically told me there was going to be a happy ending that I wasn't going to see and everything I just saw was potentially made up. Okay, thanks for that, I forgot I was watching a movie...? I also wondered why the filmmakers couldn't seem to end the film. Maybe they were enjoying it as much as I was and didn't want to let go? In the last ten minutes there were more than a handful of 'capping' moments that could have cut to the credits and left us all satisfied, but then there was another scene. And then another. And then another. Each added a bit more denouement and oddly-timed exposition and ultimately it weakened the finale (I would have left it off in the pizza shop). Still, these are minor points and they don't take away from the film's impact.
I commend Blitz for expertly entertaining us with what could have been a dark and destructive story of a disabled youth. Instead he kept it light without compromising the integrity or seriousness of the protagonist or his journey. The premise is good, the filmmaking is smart, the casting is spot-on, the acting is topnotch. Rocket Science is definitely worth seeing.
