In a league of its own (albeit a bad one)

My father once told me about a game he used to play with my uncle before I was born. Every year, my family would head to the beach and my dad would sit with a beer in hand and rate passing women on their looks. He used a scale of one – 10 and would debate with my uncle over who was the best looking. My dad was never the classy type.

She’s Out of My League deconstructs this game, though perhaps “deconstruct” is the wrong word, as that would imply the film has an air of intelligence about it. It does not.

You see, Kirk, played by Jay Baruchel, is a five. He is a lanky, skinny, nerdy guy who looks at beautiful girls and immediately dismisses his chances with them. That is until Molly, played by the beautiful Alice Eve, accidentally stumbles into his life and falls for him. She is, as his friends put it, “a hard 10,” and we all know a 10 like her could never love a five.

Kirk is already pessimistic and self-conscious, and his friends only play into those fears. The toxic combination threatens to ruin his relationship with Alice.

There might not be much to recommend here, but I can say this: She’s Out of My League gives hope to all of the fives of the world.The film says they are tens in the eyes of someone who loves them, which is a nice change of pace regardless of how cheesy that message is. However, it also says that all men are womanizing meatheads who cannot function normally when a pretty girl is around.

When Molly walks in a room, every male in her line of sight goes googly eyed and ogles her like a Thanksgiving turkey. While the actress is certainly a gorgeous woman, as a man, I found it kind of insulting that the movie insinuates our general lack of control when pretty women are around. It goes so far as to suggest that we have two heads and aren’t using the one with a brain in it.

Nevertheless, the movie’s mistaken analysis of the male instinct should be overshadowed by the laughs the story provokes. It is a comedy, after all. Unfortunately, League rarely elicits much from its tired premise. While Baruchel has been likable in supporting roles in movies such as Knocked Up and Tropic Thunder, he is not much of a leading man.

He is hardly compelling and his nasally voice eventually grates on the nerves. It is tough not to feel sympathy for his pathetic character, seeing as how — let’s face it — the majority of us are fives like him. But he lacks the charisma to work this movie through to its conclusion.

With contrived attempts at creating drama and the only laughs coming from a character nicknamed Stainer (who adopted the moniker due to his weak bladder as a child), She’s Out of My League is little more than another run-of-the-mill teen comedy that exists in a world where beautiful women actually judge a guy by what’s in his heart rather than how big his biceps are. What a world that must be.