After playing supporting roles in hit comedies like Knocked Up and Tropic Thunder, Jay Baruchel finally gets his time in the spotlight this March in both live-action and animation.  At the end of the month, Baruchel will voice the lead character in How to Train Your Dragon, but first he stars in She’s Out of My League as the average, nerdy guy who somehow wins the heart of the hot girl.

Baruchel is Kirk, a TSA worker and aspiring pilot whose friends describe as a “5” on what I guess you’d call the “hotness” scale.  According to Kirk’s friend Stainer, the way it works is that no one can date anyone with a hotness rating more than two notches above themselves.  That theory is put to the test when Kirk meets Molly, a “hard 10” who is oddly attracted to the awkward Kirk.

Everything is going great for Kirk, but his friends continue to constantly remind him that he is defying the logic of the scale.  Add to that the fact that Molly’s ex is much more of a numerical match and Kirk quickly starts to doubt himself.  Can prejudices be set aside, and before the relationship fails?  Thanks to some frighteningly lax airport security, they just might.

Baruchel is an everyman for the geek set, making him an easy guy to identify with.  His neurotic acting style is somewhat reminiscent of Woody Allen or a Four Weddings and a Funeral era Hugh Grant.  Alice Eve definitely looks the part of the perfect ten, although this movie does less to show off her acting talent than last year’s underrated Crossing Over.  Each of the supporting actors gets in their share of punch lines, which hit about fifty percent of the time.  Perhaps standing out the most is T.J. Miller as Stainer.  After delivering the one-liners mostly behind the camera in Cloverfield, he moves in front to provide some of this film’s biggest laughs, as well as some of its biggest duds.

But the jokes in She’s Out of My League extend beyond just simple one-liners and dirty jokes.  In the tradition of comedies like There’s Something About Mary, League attempts to go for a couple of big visual gags.  One such scene revolving around Kirk’s first meeting with Molly’s parents falls completely flat, but another in which Kirk needs a friend to help him, um, prepare for his date, actually works quite well.

She’s Out of My League is the kind of movie that is enjoyable while you’re watching it, but nothing really sticks with you after you’ve left the theater.  I just saw the movie and I’ve pretty much forgotten about it already.  It might make for a nice date night, though.

She’s Out of My League is rated R for “language and sexual content.”  The jokes, both verbal and visual, are dirty enough even to have me cringing.

Courtesy of a local publicist, Jeff attended a promotional screening of She’s Out of My League.