With films like We are Marshall, Glory Road, Miracle and even Air Bud crowding video store shelves, it seems the sports genre has reached its saturation point. But that does not mean the competition and camaraderie of a team is a theme viewers are willing to part with.
On this note, the British film Starter for 10 includes the trials and tribulations of a team atmosphere not on a court or field but in the realm of academe.
The movie features a trivia team striving to compete on the quiz show University Challenge (similar to America’s It’s Academic). However, that is where Starter for 10’s originality ends, as the rest of the movie is a blend of predictable formulaic clichés. Starter for 10 is the story of a son coping with a father’s death, a romantic comedy and a tale of class differences, all wrapped up inside a coming-of-age story in which a young man, Brian Jackson (James McAvoy, The Last King of Scotland), heads off to college.
The film opens with Brian as a young child watching University Challenge on TV as his smiling father (James Gaddas, Bad Girls) sits above him. In a voiceover, Brian informs the audience that “ever since I can remember, I’ve wanted to be clever.” The movie quickly fast forwards to Brian coming closer to that goal by being admitted to Bristol University. Brian’s character deepens when we learn his father has died.
Upon arriving, Brian meets an attractive brunette, Rebecca Epstein (Rebecca Hall, The Prestige). It is painfully obvious by the lingering camera shots, shy smiles and long-lasting eye contact that this is the girl for Brian, but the romantic plot takes a twist during the University Challenge team tryouts when Brian is thrown off his game and becomes distracted by a gorgeous blonde, Alice (Alice Eve, Big Nothing). But through an almost unbearable stereotypical turn of events, Brian must spend the rest of Starter for 10 realizing which girl is better for him: the cliché blonde or the slightly-less-cliché brunette.
But forget Brian, Rebecca and Alice. Brian’s teammate Patrick (Benedict Cumberbatch, Amazing Grace) is the most entertaining character in the film. A stuck-up and high-strung graduate student, Patrick is the team captain and takes University Challenge way too seriously. But through either physical comedy or high-pitched squeals – both of which Cumberbatch does equally well – Patrick’s character is the highlight of this film.
And even though the entire film is based on academia, the university setting adds a level of pretentiousness, as Starter for 10 relies on many inside intellectual jokes that seem forced and unnecessary. There are almost so many Hamlet quotations that the film seems plagiarized from Shakespeare, and the numerous name-drops of The Graduate seem out of place and not so subtle.
Though Starter for 10 strives toward originality, it quickly falls into a pattern seen in so many coming-of-age, romantic-comedy, pseudo-intellectual movies. Although it is unique in its celebration of academia, Starter for 10 is more formulaic and facetious than it needs to be, even for a movie about British college students.
Contact reporter Clara Morris at diversions@dbk.umd.edu.
