She’s Out Of My League

We’ve all seen the billboards asking the same question How can a 10 go for a 5?

The answer is simple it’s a movie.

Written in the same vain as Knocked Up, Superbad, and The 40 Year Old Virgin, League strives to make us laugh, gross us out, and teach us about life (the formula that continues to work).

The writers, Sean Anders and John Morris (Two of the three writers of Hot Tub Time Machine), create a world and a main character that the audience can relate to; Kirk (Jay Baruchel), is a late 20s, lazy guy working a dead-end job. He is content in his life and his place in the world. A good guy with good intentions, he rolls with the constant barrage of insults that are thrown at him from seemingly every character in every scene of the movie, save for one, Molly (Alice Eve), who plays the perfect girl, perfectly. She is beautiful, smart, driven, and tired of going out with same type of guys who hurt her. It was the perfect time, maybe theonlytime for this relationship to work.

The two meet for the first time when Molly leaves her phone at a security checkpoint that Kirk works at in the airport. He holds on to it for her until she returns from her trip and they start dating. That is when the writers had to get creative. Thankfully, Molly and Kirk are both avid hockey fans (seemingly the only thing they have in common). This breaks down the initial wall between them and we see the beginning of their relationship. The rest of the script was as formulaic and predictable as it gets. Like any movie in this genre, the guy and girl were going to battle some hurdles, take some time apart, and hopefully make it work in the end. There were no surprises here, which made this movie not as much fun to watch.

A bright spot in the story came from another crutch in the Apatow style movies, strong supporting characters. They were written very well and were responsible for most of the laughs. Through their constant barrage of insults and knock-downs to Kirk, they helped mold him into what he thought he was a 5. However, when they came to the realization that Kirk not only had a chance, but was falling for Molly, they started some of their own reflection, and they were changed because of it.

All in all, League was a funny, cute rom-com that asks its audience to look at themselves, and realize their self worth, no easy feat for writers, but they did a pretty good job.

Leaving the theatre, I did my own self reflection and I took from the film the lesson the writers tried to teach me Confidence, as well as insecurity are issues that everyone has to deal with, and if you dont think you areworthyof dating the hot girl, then you never will.