Movie: She's Out of My League

Since the release of "Superbad," the content of comedy films has seen a major overhaul. Hollywood created movies like "Role Models," "Knocked-Up," "Miss March," "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" by using the same basic formula. In fact, every movie since has been one attempt after another to one-up the former's raunchiness. Now this is all good fun, but let's admit that its getting old. The jokes revolve around the elongated scene in which the stars of the films improvise bizarre, random analogies or anecdotes of the character's experiences. This is great, really----to a point. What Hollywood likes to do is drive something down your throat until you vomit the same blood-red color of comedy for about a week. Or months.

The best part about "She's Out of My League" is that it is not at all like what the trailers and advertisements depict it as. In the ads, Jim Field Smith's movie is just another Will Ferrell-esque man-comedy. But this movie isn't like that at all----even though T.J. Miller (the actor that plays "Stainer") really, really wants it to be. In fact, his performance was by far the worst part of the film. Something like the leftover meals of Will Ferrell or Seth Rogen. My problem with the actors in comedies now is that they all want to be the same improvisation icon that Jonah Hill or John C. Reilly is.

But apart from Miller, what "She's Out of My League" is, is really, surprisingly good.

It isn't a man-comedy in the sense that every joke is perverse or "edgy," but I will say that there is plenty of that humor in Smith's film. But this movie has heart. The movie attempts to deliver a message to its audience, and even if that message isn't fully realized, its a lot better than nothing at all. Furthermore, I would not call this a comedy in the sense that audiences now know the genre as. It is simply a hilarious romantic comedy. Which was nice.

By far, the best part of the movie was Nate Torrence, who played Devon. And the interactions between the two brothers, Kirk and Dillon, were also really entertaining. The worst part was that the movie relied on the same formula that every romantic comedy ever relies on. No secrets.

And here it is:

A budding relationship goes really well, embarrassing moment, make-up from embarrassing moment, short bit of happy times, then an "astonishing scene" in which the romance is torn apart. Cue time lapse. We then find the characters on separate tracks until a startling revelation takes place in which the characters join together again. And that's the romantic comedy in a nutshell (no pun intended----for those of you who have seen the movie).

Overall, I wanted less T.J. Miller and more deviation from traditional formulas. However, the rest of the cast does a very good job in a movie that allows us to stand back and really question our intelligence for actually laughing with "Paul Blart: Mall Cop."

And yes, I'm talking to you.

In conclusion:
"She's Out of My League"
Overall rating: 3.5 out of 5

Comment on this post; let me know what you think.

Source: iMDB.com