Review: 'She's Out of My League' has heart, laughs

Alice Eve and Jay Baruchel in "She's Out of My League."

Can a blond bombshell really fall for a bumbling geek? Maybe in a terminally awkward and frustrated schoolboy’s fondest fantasy. Definitely in the puerile imaginations of screenwriters Sean Anders and John Morris, who took audiences for a ridiculously raunchy ride in “Sex Drive.”

Now they’ve brought to life the answer to every love-starved pencil-neck’s dream with “She’s Out of My League,” a comedy that leans more toward romance than raunch, although there’s still enough of the latter to earn a solid R rating.

But this romp from first-time director Jim Field Smith has its share of laughs and even an admirable moral center, starring a talented if relatively unknown group of young players. A gangly Jay Baruchel (“Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist”) is well-cast and likable as Kirk, a 20-something Pittsburgh airport security agent who still hangs with his high school buddies (Mike Vogel, T.J. Miller and Nate Torrence), who are also his co-workers, and is perfectly content with his lot in life — except for its lack of a girlfriend. A vivacious Alice Eve (“Crossing Over”) fairly dazzles as Molly, a gorgeous blonde who passes through Kirk’s checkpoint one day and, in her rush to catch a plane, leaves behind her cell phone.

Kirk has a perfect excuse to contact Molly when she comes back home, and when he returns her phone, she rewards him with a pair of tickets to a hockey game, totally missing the fact that this dream girl is asking him out on date until someone sets him straight.