In Theaters: She's Out of My League

She's Out of My League is a mood piece. Lacking substance, originality, or a coherent treatment of its putative subject matter -- self-image and the defeatist hierarchies we compose from social and superficial assumptions -- it's the kind of goob-fest that relies almost completely on the amenability of its viewers. But the thing is, if you know that, on the right day, you are entirely capable of losing it over a perfectly delivered sexy yoda joke, a "slapshot regatta" sequence, or even the kind of nasty body humor you might sneer at in a more sensible (or harassed) frame of mind, director Jim Field Smith has made a movie just for you. This can be a tough thing to accept, especially if you (and your horrified seatmates) don't see it coming; there were a couple of points where I thought I might accidentally suffocate myself in my attempt to maintain some kind of cool. Which actually just moves me farther into the ranks of the film's classic band of misfits.

Chief among them is a flimsy nerdlinger named Kirk (Jay Baruchel, returning to form after brilliantly playing against type in Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist). A Pittsburg TSA agent drifting through his mid-twenties, Kirk is pathetically hung up on his ex (Lindsay Sloane), a predicament compounded by the fact that his white trash family has adopted her and her new boyfriend as one of their own. Kirk gets his support from three old friends who also moved directly from high school into the working world ("I wanted to go to college," Kirk says, "but my dad wanted a pool."). There's Stainer (T.J. Miller), an aggro underminer hiding a break-up hurt of his own; Devon (Nate Torrence), the de facto matriarch with a wife at home; and Jack (Mike Vogel), the one who accidentally grew up handsome but refused to defect to the other side. The four actors have an appealing rapport -- as offhandedly sweet as it is determinedly raunchy -- and Miller and Torrence especially enliven pretty standard fare.

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