Rocket Science

8/10/07 Embarcadero, w/ Elliot, 7:30pm

Indie-comedy paint-by-numbers, (Rushmore + Royal Tenenbaums + Squid and the Whale + Napoleon Dynamite + Election + Thumbsucker), which isn't meant here to be a criticism. The movie was extremely enjoyable. Afterwards, I told Elliot, "It made me wish I was in high school again," which them prompted me to go off about how much fun all that angst was, which ultimately let to me saying something like "It was all [the angst] so visceral!," and "I mean, it wasn't fun at the time. But looking back on it is fun to remember." Any movie that makes me wax nostalgic about high school must have done something right.

What made this most different from Rushmore, and part of the reason why it probably isn't as good or why it would not hold up to nearly as many repeat viewings as Rushmore, is that the movie is very much from the perspective of the main character. The viewer sympathizes with him, and as much as we laugh at him trying to throw the cello through the window, in the end we want him to get it through. You can't really ever see him from another character's perspective. In Rushmore, it's easy to watch it from the point of view of Bill Murray's character, or the teacher lady. It's also easy to see Max from the perspective of his little friend or his father or the headmaster. In Rocket Science, the other characters exist only insofar as they matter to the main character.

The only possible exception is the character of his father, who avoids that fate mainly by not appearing in the movie after the opening scene until the closing scene, which is possibly the best scene in the whole movie. The way the father at first doesn't even answer the kid's question and instead starts to talk about how he had trouble getting off the interstate to pick up the kid instantly gives the father way more depth as a character than anyone aside from the kid. And the weary way in which he finally does answer the question with pretty much "I don't know," tired but not exasperated at the kid. The scene also opens up the world of the two characters because the conversation is obviously just another scene in the relationship of the two, a relationship we haven't really seen at all. Really, the whole movie is probably best viewed as a perfectly entertaining setup to the final scene in the car.

The other great thing in the car is the moment when the kid says something about how one day he's going to find a way to say what he needs to say at that moment. Like Elliot said, it makes you hope the movie is autobiographical at least a little bit, and that the movie is in some way the way the kind found to speak.


The voiceover narration that opens the movie at first felt a little to close to that of Royal Tenenbaums', but it was written really well and was actually quite a bit denser than RT's. I couldn't figure out why Elliot & I were the only two laughing; it was hilarious.