She’s out of my League Movie Review

She’s out of my league
3.0/5

Good news everyone! There’s a romantic comedy out there that isn’t horrible! After wading through all the awful, formulaic rom coms that have flooded Hollywood in recent years, it is very refreshing to see one that knows how to be funny.
First, a quick aside. If you don’t know the romantic comedy equation, here it is: boy meets girl, they interact in some way and start dating, usually with some sort of crazy hijinks, they have a fight, and they get back together in some contrive way. Some movies swap roles around a bit, and they do each thing differently, but it’s an equation just as much as a^2 + b^2 = c^2. Ever notice how many movies have the girl about to marry some jerk when the guy breaks it up to confess his love? Yeah.

Anyway, this movie is not your typical romantic comedy. Mostly. I’ll get to that though.

Things this movie did right: first of all, it was not sleazy like it could have been. There is no nudity in this movie, something they could have done for the money but would have just made it a cheap flick. Not including nudity made this movie much more respectable.
It’s also very funny, something I hear is important for a comedy. It’s not cheap laughs either; a lot of the dialogue is witty, though I wouldn’t call it intelligent, exactly. A lot of the laughs come from Kirk’s friends, the usual ragtag group you’d expect to band together at an airport. It’s the humor that comes from a night of hanging out with your good friends and letting go. Fortunately, most of the characters in the movie have that same natural feel that makes them believable as people. Even the relationship that develops isn’t completely far-fetched, especially given the circumstances.

What was probably one of the most exciting things about the movie was that it wasn’t formulaic! The opening and middle of the movie were witty, engaging, and believable. At this point, it would have made at least a 4.0, if not 4.5. but then the ending happened.
You can probably guess what happened here. Huge fight and break up. Which was really, horribly contrived. I really can’t believe that it happened the way it did. It was like they had to force it into the movie just to end the movie. Which, of course, is done by way of an unlikely plan. It seems that they didn’t trust themselves to be able to end the movie without some sort of major conflict happening. But upon more thought, there was one possible mitigating factor; it could be a parody of all the other romantic comedies! After all, the ending is seriously unlikely and touches upon a lot of the unlikely things that happen in rom com endings, like planes that never leave the runway. Not in this movie! So hopefully, that’s what they were going for. Sadly, even if it is, it still doesn’t mesh well with the rest of the movie, and just feels very forced.

Overall, it was a good movie going experience, and something that I’m glad I saw. Hopefully, directors will learn their lesson from this movie and move away from that tired and stale formula.

Posted in Arts and Entertainment