Film Review: Rocket Science (2007)

You know, sometimes maybe it is rocket science.

Screenwriting that is.

Okay, okay. Nobody's going to build a functional moon rocket in his backyard the way a scribe can sit in her basement and pen the next great American screenplay, but Jeffrey Blitz' script for the 2007 independent sleeper "Rocket Science" perfectly illustrates how easy it is to miscalibrate a hundred-some pages of action and dialogue.

Blitz, who also directed the film, first made waves with his 2002 documentary "Spellbound" which garnered an Oscar nomination for its utterly mesmerizing foray into the world of the national spelling bee.

And like "Spellbound", "Rocket Science" takes viewers into the dog-eat-dog arena of competitive academics. High school debate. The film opens with the mid-speech freeze-up of New Jersey's preeminent high school debater, Ben Wekselbaum. On the heels of his failure, Ben experiences a Salingeresque disappearance from the realm which makes him great. This launches an effort by Wekselbaum's bitter debate partner, Ginny Ryerson, to recruit a stuttering wallflower, Hal Hefner, as Wekselbaum's replacement.

Hal, despite his intelligence, is an obvious poor choice for the debate team. But Ginny, through her well-honed powers of persuasion convinces him that his mind is born of the rhetorician's womb. This turns out to be a wonderful angle from which to pursue this setting, especially when Ginny's overall motives manifest, which, for the sake of spoilage, I won't go into.

But there are problems with the overall execution.