  Jay Baruchel and Alice Eve in She's Out of My League. |
If you’ve seen the trailer for the Jay Baruchel comedy She’s Out of My League, you know the movie’s two key gross-out moments. That’s just how trailers are.
They are: a “manscaping” scene, in which our hero has his nether regions artfully shaved, and a premature ejaculation scene interrupted by the parents (and an overly slobby family dog). I know, too much info.
Though these are laugh-out-loud payoff-moments, they are not the movie - any more than the chest-hair removal scene was the 40-Year-Old Virgin or the “pregnant sex” scene was Knocked Up.
Both those Judd Apatow movies were better than their trailers. The surprisingly-strong She’s Out of My League is too. Though directed by Jay Field Smith, a Brit rooted in improv, it is a broad comedy with an emotional core. And it features Baruchel, who is an alumnus of the Apatow rep company.
Crude, and often lewd, She’s Out of My League is (almost) always slightly to the left of where you think it’s going.
The movie’s conceit — that we are judged by the calibre of romantic partner we attract — proves a surprisingly rich comedic vein with a “funny-because-it’s-true” vibe.
In She’s Out of My League, Montreal-born Baruchel plays Kirk, a lowly security staffer at Pittsburgh Airport. As the movie opens, he’s still desperate to get back together with the fingernails-on-blackboard annoying Marnie (Lindsay Sloane) his ex of two years’ standing.
This disgusts his motley crew of airport-buddy friends — the piggish Stainer (T.J. Miller), sensitive chubby guy Devon (Nate Torrence) and ladies’ man Jack (Mike Vogel).
For all their bro support, however, they are as guilty as Kirk’s cartoonishly dislikable family when it comes to reinforcing his loser-identity (born of his low-paying job and lack of success with women).
Enter the stunning Molly (Alice Eve) a “solid 10,” whom Kirk meets cutely in the security process, and who, crazily enough to all involved, actually seems to like him “that way.” Even the audience, conditioned as it is by media images, has to ask itself, what does Molly - who can and has attracted every kind of alpha-male, from pilots to pro athletes - see in a “5” like Kirk?
Unlike, say, the sitcom world, where guys like Kevin James or Jim Belushi play blue-collar shlubs who just naturally have beautiful wives, She’s Out of My League actually makes a half-assed attempt to work out that equation.
More dramatically, the transformative effect that having a beautiful girlfriend has on everyone around Kirk is interesting (even as he begins to creep out over the entire situation).
Some of the gags ring a little familiar (example: Stainer fronts a Hall and Oates cover band that evokes the ‘80s Billy Joel cover band from Step Brothers). But the sharply-depicted characters, the majority played by pro-comics, smooth over the rough spots.
Best dynamic: between Stainer and Molly’s razor-tongued best friend Patty (played by the incomparable Krysten Ritter). Instant enemies, they verbally claw at each other so savagely, you expect them to fall in bed together out of pure heat.
Yes, She’s Out of My League is a crude buddy comedy. But as crude buddy comedies go, it’s a shave above.
(This film is rated 14 A)
jim.slotek@sunmedia.ca
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