Word warriors

Love is the thing that ain't rocket science in Rocket Science, writer-director Jeffrey Blitz's coming-of-age comedy about a high school kid who stutters so badly there's nothing left to do but join the debate team. Literally and figuratively, Hal (Reece Thompson) needs to find his voice. How else will he ever have a chance with Ginny (Anna Kendrick), the Hillary Clinton of Plainsborough High, who can argue the pros or cons of just about anything, lacerating her opponents with a machine-gun spray of words? Blitz, who brought such a poignant sense of hope and fear to the wordsmiths in Spellbound, is both more wistful and more whimsical here, and the two moods don't always gel the way you'd like them to. But Thompson captures the awkwardness that's part of being a teenager, stutter or no stutter, and Kendrick is like something out of a '30s screwball comedy - Her Boy Friday.