Rocket Science is essentially a movie about a boy who discovers his worth and abilities throughout his furious campaign for his dreams. The film's mood pushes the limit of tongue- in-cheek, and it is certainly felt as a comedy because after all, the premise is a stuttering boy joining a debate team, but despite all the hilarious non sequiturs and plot-driven laughs, I take that essential theme to heart. Hal Heffner is an innocently gawky young high school kid, portrayed in a should-be career-making performance by Reece Thompson, who has a severe stuttering problem and experiences a change of events that he finds to have had a tempestuous emotional effect on him that I'm just dying to give away but won't. From this point on, we share those emotions, because it's nearly impossible not to throw in all your chips for this kid. The reason is because growing up, frankly, is hard. Once one has done it, one doesn't feel like it was as hard as it was, but at the time, it most definitely was. Watching this film, we watch this naive stuttering boy crippled by inhibitions and shyness mature, reaching the extremes of anger, confusion, love, intellectual growth, and introspection.
There are plenty of movies about high school, and they're full of comeuppance, humor targeted for that age, discovery of sex, et cetera, but there is very very rarely a movie like Rocket Science, a movie about that particular time in your life when you were just growing into yourself and you didn't even know it, and you hardly look back at that time because of the unawareness of self at that point and, hopefully, the growth since then. This is an important little film that, though it isn't receiving the attention I feel it would and should get with a wider and longer release, time will be kind to, with great hope.
