Lele Since the beginning I feared that the screenplay had made Hal win the debate competition. But fortunately this is not a main stream silly movie: a stutterer cannot even be recruited for a debate team, thus Hal is out of the competition. Being out is fine, according to Ben. (BTW, I completely agree. I am not a competitor nor a supporter of some team)A possible answer is that non any question has an answer. Not any question makes sense. Acting and directing was fine, the script was even better. At the moment it's the only US high school movie where people are not bullied, there is no metal detector at the entrance and girls are not mean men eaters or silly cheerleaders.As a teacher I am glad that this movie deals with 'normal' teens even if when I was as old as Hal I was totally unaware of all the stuff he cares about!8/10

a_flynn78 You know how there are stories that are adversity to triumph, unstable to stable, confused to knowing. This is not a happy story, i sat through all the frustrating bits in the movies, putting my shirt over my head whenever he tried to debate with his enormous stutter, thinking its okay, because I'm gonna see some scenes at the end where he has finally lost his stutter. I didn't. Maybe i had the wrong idea when i watched this movie, i was convinced from start till perhaps the last scene, that i was going to see an inspiring transformation, where i would no longer feel sorry for the kid, and that marred my view on the film. All i could think about during the whole film is not what this kid was talking about, what he was thinking about, but how he was speaking. Its like a movie where the main character looks like a bunyip, all you can think about is this main character looks like a bunyip, and not really what he/she is saying. I was convinced the inevitable transformation was going to be in his speaking patterns so i wasn't particularly interested in his views on love, because I'm sorry, i don't mean to be offensive to anybody but having a speech impediment as BAD as that, is something i couldn't bear to hear for the rest of my life, you have to try and do something about it. I thought thats what this movie was about! Look I'm sure what the kid was saying was important, and meaningful, but i was looking for more blunt changes that were imperative to me saying at the end of the movie, wow that was good. The stutter was a vehicle to portray a message about love when i went through the whole movie thinking it was the opposite, that all the references to love would make him lose his stutter. Not a horrible movie, but after i finished watching it, i felt horrible, Im a bit tired of movie producers thinking 'it will be more meaningful if we deprive the movie of a happy ending'. To be honest, i don't need happy endings, but what i do need is some light. At the end of 'Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind' i was left thinking, despite its lack of a cliché happy ending, that the main characters were not doomed because of it, that they could bounce back from the issues in the movie. I felt at the end of 'Rocket Science' that the kid was never going to get rid of his stutter, and when did his last debate and he turned to the judges and said 'Im killing it right?' that he was in fact, not killing it, he sucked, you can't debate in a musical tone, there was no growth there. Was it that hard to put a happy ending in!?!

yem777 I only give this movie 8 stars because there were so many things that were phenomenal! The acting was simply outstanding. The character of Ginny had so much potential if they'd only written the plot to include more scenes with her. There were so many directions this movie could take. After about 1 1/2 hours, when Ben and Hal were in the competition, all of a sudden, the movie took a sharp left turn for nowhereville and left me so angry. Angry at Hal, angry at Ginny, angry at Hal's Dad, but mostly angry and the director. There are a hundred different endings that could have been executed even OK to make this a 10 star movie, but no. If they'd followed the obvious plot and had Ginny and Hal win despite their differences, it would've been generic, but executed so brilliantly that it would have been a great movie. Then, they could've had Hal and Ginny come back together and win the debate, and have her switch back schools or something. Hell, they could've even left their relationship broken or something if only they'd focused more on her character, on how hard it was for her to leave Hal like that. They could've elaborated on the other misfits she tried to get to debate. They could've had Hal and Ben go and beat her, or get second to her, and have a happy ending where they get back together. The kid threw a cello through her window for Christ sake! Everyone watching wants them to be together in the end! And even if they threw out all that, they should've reversed the father scene (although they should have made it better, he was the only bad character in the film) and the pizza scene, and ended it with Hal flawlessly asking for a piece of pizza. Maybe one of those, "what happened afterwords" kind of epilogues on the screen would've been nice. You know, just to make you feel good. I would say the last option, and maybe the best would've been to make the movie significantly longer, and tie up ALL the plot lines in one super-ending that occurred somehow after the state championships. Maybe if they'd made Ginny only a junior, and they had like another year. i don't know. Or they could've had her do the same thing as Ben in state's and then epiphanize about how much she liked Hal. Just anything other than the ending they chose.Overall i feel disappointed, somewhat angry, and somewhat sad. This movie had unbelievable potential and just threw it away. The plot felt remarkably incomplete, with all the plot lines left open, even the "how to deal with life" plot was left open by the poor execution of the final car scene. So... with a 10 star first half of the plot, 0 stars for the second half, 10 stars for acting, 10 stars for filming i averaged that to end up with 7 1/2, and i round up to 8 stars. If you read this far you're a loser but i appreciate it.

ekeby I'm surprised that this film elicits so many negative reviews here. I enjoyed reading the rant by the guy who spells cello "chello." I think that pretty much explains it. Literacy will be required to appreciate this movie.This has to be the best dialog in any film ever made with a stutterer as a central character. I found the performances letter-perfect; not a false note anywhere. This is a movie where even the bit parts are played by well-cast actors, not producers' pretty boyfriends or girlfriends. I loved the girl in the washroom with the nosebleed, for example. Perfect.Rushmore did not come to mind while I watched this film, nor did any of the other "quirky" films named here by other reviewers. But I did think of it as a companion piece to "Welcome to the Dollhouse." Both set in NJ, and both with central characters at the bottom of their school social ranking, and coping with their realities better than one would think.I particularly liked the relationship between adults and kids in this film. The adults (parents and teachers) are wise about the kids, and the kids are just as wise about the adults. The tone was just right.