She's Out of My League

Seen at: Carmike 10, at 4:25 this afternoon

On the surface, She's Out of My League purports to follow the logical progression of the Weak Postmodern Man to its ultimate conclusion. The hero is an undereducated and underemployed young man, slender of frame and with a personality that is less than assertive. He is every "omega male" out there in America in 2010.

We meet him at the most awkward moment of his life so far, as he pathetically attempts to win back the love of an ex-girlfriend (whom we can tell is beneath him in character).

By fate he is going to run into a "solid 10" in the form of Molly, an event planner with sparkling blue eyes and blonde hair. Hence the title.

A review that I read on the web told me what to expect of this movie, namely that there is no realistic way that such a woman would fall for such man. The movie actually asserts this "He's a 5, She's a 10," and that's too big a leap to make.

Thus we have the rarified view of the Hollywood view of modern romance: all men are beneath all women. The strong men are assholes. The non-assholes are weak. All women realize this. Only the Goddess of Love herself keeps things going, by leading the heroine to somehow overlook the faults of the hero.

The movie lived up to my expectations on one level, but during the first scene in which the two principals meet, I could tell that the web review I'd read simply didn't understand the movie.

In the language of classical cinema, the movie was telling me that the premise of the story (that the hero is a typical omega male) was a ruse. In fact the hero had quite a few strong classical characteristics that made him exactly the kind of man that the "solid 10" heroine would be interested in getting to know.

Specifically, it is apparent that Molly knows very well that men slobber all over her when they meet her. They are distracted by her. They put her on a pedestal.

The hero is somewhat immune to her, refreshingly, precisely because he is so beaten down. At the magical moment when their eyes meet (across a crowded airport screening area), he allows himself only the most temporary flash of true love. Then he returns to his placid acceptance of the reality of the situation--temporarily drained of self esteem, yet firm in his actions as an airport employee (because a man does his job).

He is at the low point in his life, and he barely keeps his eyes open. He isn't even interested in looking at her.

That's a necessary but not sufficient condition for the hero to pique the interest of the heroine.

What wins her over, in the first scene, is that he becomes her champion. When his fellow TSA employees are hassling her at the airport screening line, he naturally and without pretense takes the position of honor. He stands behind her, literally, and speaks up for her when she cannot (because then she'd be a bitch).

Moreover, we understand that his desire for her is not simply because she is a hot babe. In reality, they are alike, because he, as an intelligent young man, has to suffer a constant stream of indignities from his friends, co-workers and families. She reflects his own spiritual state, and that is why there legitimately is magic when their eyes first meet.

At this point, I knew the love story would work for me. It kept getting better after that.

For example, eventually if the hero is really win her completely, he must provide an overt demonstration of his desire, specially by a physical action which he initiates. The way the story handles this, subtly over several scenes until it reaches, uh, a climax (wink wink), made for a hefty portion of the charm of this movie.

The story here was quite clever on many levels. There is a fun play on the literal meaning title by the use of hockey, played in both a professional arena and in a family basement.

The story amazingly never took the painfully obvious route I thought it would. It put the characters in fresh scenarios of tension, instead of the same old Postmodern chestnuts. At every point it kept inventing a new way to have the principals move the story forward, and to create sharp but pleasing waves of tension when their love ambitions are temporarily thwarted (as it must).

This could almost be a Gary Cooper-Barbara Stanwyck movie, catapulted into the language of the early 21st century. Some loving and enjoyable second unit cinematography of Pittsburgh, including the Warhol Museum reception hall, made for a visually engaging film experience.

It had just the right dash of contemporary crudeness to speak in the vernacular of today's audience. What more could one ask for in this type of movie?

Moreover, in the climax it connects in a seamless way to the present-day cultural notion that asks women to become the active heroine, i.e. "the princess must save the (weak) prince, so that he is no longer weak." One saw the extreme version of this is the teeth-baring courtship rituals of Avatar. IN this movie, we understand the necessity of this active quality of the heroine as championess, because of the "perfection" (by cultural surface standards) of character Molly.

Thus in the climax of the story, it is she, not he, who must actually travel the furthest physical distance to where they can embrace (in the airport of course). In terms of courtship dynamics, it is he, not she, who must break away from his family to stand by her side (she is already her own woman).

Yet this apparent inversion (or warping perhaps) of the classical courtship paradigm leads back to a place that seems familiar in a classical sense. Namely, we arrive at the notion that seduction is the woman's game, not the man's, and that any intelligent woman knows instinctively that when she meets a good man, she must go out of her way to grab his attention. Like I said, this could almost be Cooper and Stanwyck, in a Postmodern Mobius Strip sort of way.