Starter for 10
2.5 stars
Directed by: Tom Vaughan
Starring: James McAvoy, Alice Eve
PG-13, 96 min.
A screenwriting professor at Penn used to say, "If you aim for The Godfather and come up short, you still have Goodfellas. But if you aim for Goodfellas and come up short, you wind up with The Net." Starter for 10, the new British coming-of-age comedy/drama, aims even lower.
It's hard to criticize a movie that succeeds at everything it tries to do. The story is, well, semi-interesting. The acting is pretty good. The script is . complete. But Starter for 10 tries for so little that it's almost impossible to go wrong. It follows all the formulas for its genre: boy gets into college, boy leaves home, family and friends behind, boy meets girl, boy joins trivia quiz team competing on national television (Okay, so that's a little different), public and private plot lines run parallel until they interweave and connect at the end and - surprise! - boy gets girl. Though it has a few twists and some new ideas, the fact that it strays ever so slightly from its conventions is almost more predictable than if it didn't.
And yet, somehow, it's relatively enjoyable to watch. It's the kind of mindless claptrap that doesn't require your full attention but rewards you every so often, just for staying awake, with a joke or interesting image. While it may be reminiscent of, oh, anything and everything you've ever seen before, there's a reason why this type of movie keeps getting made: the formula works. It's easy to like a story that seems so familiar. It may not be big-screen entertainment, but it is moderately entertaining.
There are some clever scenes here and there, but it's not a memorable film overall. It takes on some intriguing subjects but consistently falls short of any meaningful revelation. Though the vocabulary being used to describe this movie may seem rather bland, rest assured that the movie is even more so. In fact, Starter for 10 can be very accurately summed up in one word: fine.
