She's Out of My League

I find humor is intensely personal and not always consistent. Personal experiences and current moods can strip the funny right out of a good joke, and from the entertainer's side of things, sometimes the journey from thought to expression takes the Good Intention Expressway to Crappytown. In sum, I was apprehensive about this one.

Jay Baruchel plays Kirk, a lonely loser who pines for his bitchy ex-girlfriend Marnie (played by Lindsay Sloane) while dreaming of bigger and better things. Enter Molly, the impossibly beautiful yet grounded sex goddess played by Alice Eve, who inexplicably becomes interested in Kirk. In addition to providing masturbatory allure for men young and old thanks to her obvious physical attributes, she also has a fantastic, high paying job, impossibly studly ex-boyfriend, and a condo right out of My Life Is Better Than Yours Digest.

The movie is all about exaggeration. Kirk's brother could not exist in real life without mandatory hockey helmet and elbow pads because no one is really that retarded (well, post puberty anyway). Actually, every character in this movie is an immature stereotype of some sort or another, it feels like they were written by teenaged boys over a lost weekend of pizza, tears, and Sixteen Candles.

Having said all of that, this movie had a silver bullet for me - it exposed my fundamental weakness. Kirk is a young, skrawny me. Uncomfortable in his own skin, no self esteem whatsoever, so ready to accept his flaws as eternal, unalterable fact. Of course no woman could love him for him. How could they? He has a shitty job, a shitty car, his family is a carnival of embarrassment, his dreams seem unattainable and he's seen himself in the mirror. He knows what beautiful looks like, and he does not see it in his own reflection.

Let's be honest, most of us are shallow. At least a little bit. A major component to companionship is sexual attraction, and a vital aspect of that is physical constitution. When you're embarrassed by what you see in yourself, it takes away what others see in you. Because at that point, you are leading with your flaws. In the real world, Molly and Kirk would never get together because as long as Kirk sees Molly as unattainable, she likely would be. And frankly, most hot people are full of themselves. Fuckers.

This movie however, teaches us that when one focuses their attention on their strengths, their flaws become not just tolerable, but lovable. Perhaps only in this movie would someone as hot as Molly find someone as physically unimpressive as Kirk attractive. Frankly, I was just thrilled with the casting choice of Jay Baruchel, because this time it's not just us fatties who are considered repulsive, but the pasty white emaciated minority.

Look, I can see where a lot of people will watch this movie and hate it. It's not overly funny, there's not a lot in here that we haven't seen before - it's yet another take on Beauty and the Beast. I enjoyed it because I found something I could connect with. Kirk's pain has been something I have felt my entire life.

Oh, speaking of pain, there is an extreme close up of naked skinny white man ass which takes place during a ball shaving scene. Might be important to know that going in.

I give this a 6 out of 10.