Kirk’s friends are generous enough to rate him a 5. He would get a 6 if he didn’t get subtraction points for having no ambition and driving a crappy car. Then he meets Molly (Alice Eve), a classified 10, who is not even aware that he is out on a date with her when they’re at a hockey game. How did this happen?
In what is a better than average script for a geek meets babe comedy, the dialogue eventually gives supporting reasons as to why Molly, an event planner, would be interested in giving Kirk, a TSA security guard, a more than fair shot. In the stretched past realistic conventions of this scenario, Molly isn’t exactly a real girl but a fantasy girl who meets all the qualified insecurities you find in a movie like this.
What’s not so surprising is that Molly’s friends are way bitchier than she is, particularly Krysten Ritter who is ready to pounce the line to Kirk’s friend, “I’m so not into you.” When Kirk and Molly are actually out on dates none of their friends matter, and the dialogue has a cute-polite and dorky-polite polish. It’s so embarrassing watching Kirk make a move on Molly that it’s a relief to see her get on top in the make-out scene. Which ends in a spill.
To be honest, I’ve been wanting to know for the past two years what it would have looked like for Kevin Sandusky to get it on with Jennifer Love Hewitt in “Tropic Thunder,” one of my favorite repeat viewings comedies along with “Hot Rod” with Andy Samberg and “Hamlet 2” with Steve Coogan. We never saw Sandusky win a Teen Choice award, but his date at the Oscars at the end of “Thunder” was with little dimples Hewitt. But in the back of my mind I wondered, can Baruchel with the right movie role put the cool in nerd again?
In this out-and-out first big movie lead role, Baruchel is a fumbling and inept neurotic that makes Woody Allen in his heyday seem more attractive in comparison. As it turns out, Kirk is such low self-esteem droop that he is hoping that Molly has a really bad defect that can bring her down more to his level. On a bell curve, Sandusky gets like a rate of 8 on the cool scale and Kirk gets about a 2.
Broad as formula, the flick sinks down to bathroom humor just like any other comedy has been compelled to do since “American Pie.” Except this time the bathroom humor can at least be given credit for shear originality, thus construed by the shaving of Kirk’s nutsack. This leads to a visual joke in the final moments that will prompt the use of those gag reflexes of yours.
To its credit there are plenty of feel-good laughs in “League,” and if there’s anything that goes sour, it’s the third act that comes on too much as a strained heart-tugger, but it’s encouraging to watch Kirk grow a pair. This is not a bonafide classic entry in the geeks comedy canon, but if anything, this is a cool hangout movie. The hangout movie only amounts to a good time though if you have a bunch of friends to watch it with you – it helps if somebody is there to take the task as commentator to make fun of Kirk non-stop.
So this makes for a minor hangout movie recommendation that could be worth one more additional viewing on DVD in the supposed future. It helps that Alice Eve, on the cover of this month’s Maxim Magazine issue, is perky and sweet on top of being a blonde bombshell. I almost want to give it one letter-grade subtraction for having us gaze at Baruchel’s hideous body for long stretches. But it does keep in common to what the movie is striving to achieve in the first place: Embarrassing laughs.
Go to the official site at http://www.getyourrating.com/
Grade: B-
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