Rocket Science is a film which piqued my attention since it’s release, based on it’s comparison’s to Wes Anderson’s Rushmore and Todd Solondz’ Welcome to the Dollhouse. 
Turns out that that my unintentional avoidance of the film over the past two years merely delayed by disappointment: the aforementioned films might qualify as inspirations, but certainly not peers. While Reece Daniel Thompson deserves some credit for convincingly pulling off the stutter of Hal Hefner, the smart but speech-challenged high school boy who is an unlikely recruit for his school’s policy debate team, the annoyance to payoff ratio for spending time with this character was much, much lower than it needed to be.
The story goes something like this: ultra type A debate team queen Ginny (Anna Kendrick) taps Hal to be her partner after she is left crushed by former partner (and debate god) Ben (Nicholas D’Agosto), who just stops talking in the middle of their state finals performance. Now if you think that sounds like a, well, debatable premise for a feature length film, then you have shown an insight found to be lacking in writer/director Jeffrey Blitz (who directed the charming documentary Spellbound). There are a lot of elements to admire here: an avoidance of storybook or convenient plot resolutions, fascinating character types, and a fresh and realistic look at contemporary family life, to name a few. All of this provides the potential for the audience’s investment in Hal’s quest. However, there isn’t enough of a cogent idea to bind it all together. Hal doesn’t know what he wants or why, and as the audience, we need to either be invested enough to enjoy the eventual reveal (which never happens) or satisfied with our omniscient view of the overall pointlessness. Instead, the film merely layers on the frustration, failing in the end to say anything interesting enough to justifies the time we’ve spent.
Here are this morning’s Oscar-nominated films, alphabetically. The nominees for foreign language film and documentary feature are compiled at the end of the list. (Short format nominees are listed in a 
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