She's Out of My League movie review (2010)

Baruchel looks as if he could indeed be a five, but he has that essential quality of turning into a 10 with his attitude alone. Here he will find what I have long observed, that everyone is beautiful when they're looking at you with love in their eyes. Kirk has recently become the victim of the sort of perfect storm that strikes the heroes of movies like this. His girlfriend Marnie (Lindsay Sloane) has broken up with him. But having lacked a warm family relationship, she latched onto Kirk's family, and now hangs out at his house with her new boyfriend, who Kirk's parents approve of. Think about that.

Molly (Alice Eve) is also fresh from romantic disaster. When she loses her iPhone and Kirk finds it and returns it, she asks him out to dinner. He's stunned, because, yes, she's out of his league. But it turns out Molly is ready to play in a different league, one where being a 10 on the outside is less important than being a 10 on the inside. Kirk's innate decency melts her heart.

Jay Baruchel has that quality of seeming like someone we might actually have known outside of a movie. He plays Kirk as apologetic, easily embarrassed, with low self-esteem -- plain and simple, a nice guy. Alice Eve, who is despite all evidence British, is pretty, yes, but not actually quite a 10. A 9.5, easy. Isn't that scoring system loathsome? Her best friend, Patty (Krysten Ritter), thinks that Kirk is beneath Molly, possibly because Patty likes to bask in the reflected glow of Molly's tenhood. Kirk's own three best buddies include two party animals and one nice pudgy guy, whose combined wisdom on women is a perfect two.

There are some funny set pieces here, one involving guys rummaging through each other's netherlands, one involving a family trip to Branson, Mo., in matching sweatshirts. Do you ever get the feeling you're the last American alive who hasn't been to Branson? That Titanic attraction sounds great to me. Anyway, much depends on whether Kirk will actually make this journey.

The movie is not a comedy classic. But in a genre where so many movies struggle to lift themselves from zero to one, it's about, oh, a six point five.