A minor 'League'

Sometimes, a movie title can tell you too much.

Given a romantic comedy “She’s Out of My League,” you can literally predict everything that is going to happen in the film: A nice-but-nerdy young man -- skinny and average-looking -- is going to fall for a beautiful and sassy young woman with a great attitude, a great apartment and a great job. And she is going to fall for him, too.

Somehow, I have the sense this is more a fantasy for guys than for women.

The only surprise associated with this movie is that it is actually significantly funnier than you may fear it will be. Even though you can predict all the jokes before they are said, as the women in front o
of me were doing, the jokes are actually fairly decent.

Or rather, indecent. Body-part humor abounds, as does embarrassing-situation humor. And when a group of male friends get together, they talk about sex in a way less like real people than characters in recent movies.

Do you remember how after “Pulp Fiction” came out, we were treated to a spate of copycat movies by Tarantino wannabes? Well, “She’s Out of My League” is the first film by a Judd Apatow wannabe.

Even some of the actors are from the Apatow fold, notably star Jay Baruchel. Baruchel plays Kirk, a TSA employee at the airport in Pittsburgh (thanks to cinematographer Jim Denault, Pittsburgh has never looked more romantic). A small act of kindness leads Kirk to meet perky event-planner Molly, played by Alice Eve. Molly looks a bit like Reese Witherspoon and everyone in the movie thinks she is the most beautiful woman on the face of the globe (I personally disagree, though she is certainly attractive).

One wonders if writers Sean Anders and John Morris are from California. The only thing that seems to matter to any of the characters is how people look. No one talks about how well suited Kirk is to Molly, or how nice it is he has found a worthy girlfriend after pining for a harridan for two years. All Kirk’s three best friends (they’re straight out of the Apatow best-friend mold) talk about is how much hotter Molly is than Kirk.

Even Molly’s best friend Patty (in these movies, girls only get one best friend) is concerned solely with the disparity in their hotness. Patty, who is played by perpetual best-friend Krysten Ritter, is sour and bitter and, as if often the case in roles played by Ritter, rather more interesting than the lead actress. She has a way of delivering lines that makes them seem funny even when they aren’t.

But other characters’ lines are better, and you laugh at them (or at least smile) even when you know they are coming.

The ending, however, is lame. It is as sub-mediocre as you may have been afraid the whole film would be.