Customer Reviews

Starter for 10

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

From a very young age, Brian Jackson has crammed his mind with facts and knowledge, and now he's off to university for more. But the most important lesson he has to learn is that knowledge and wisdom are not the same thing.

Brian quickly makes a strong impression in academia, especially when he gets onto the school team for University Challenge, the wildly popular quiz show he grew up watching with his father. But the rest of life isn't so easy: Brian falls head-over-heels for his beautiful but self-centered teammate Alice, who leads him on despite having no real interest in intimacy; his mother, now ten years widowed, has found a new lover; he just can't sort out his feelings for Rebecca, a student activist with more than a passing interest in him; his blue-collar mates from home are starting to regard him as a class traitor; and any time he tries to be clever or impulsive, it always goes awry.

James McAvoy, who has already won great critical acclaim for his skills in dramatic roles, shows that he is equally adept in comedy, giving Brian an aw-shucks charm that keeps him loveable despite his penchant for saying exactly the wrong thing. Among the rest of the cast, the two greatest standouts are Benedict Cumberbatch, who steals his every scene as the hilariously snobbish team captain, and the extraordinarily talented Rebecca Hall, who plays Rebecca with such spirit and beauty that you can't help rooting for Brian to come around and realize that she's the one for him. Veteran thespians Charles Dance and Lindsay Duncan have a brilliant cameo as Alice's parents, and Mark Gatiss makes a convicing Bamber Gascoigne (the long-time host of University Challenge, and a real-life icon of British TV).

The script is witty, and gives new twists to the traditional conventions of romantic comedy. The climax on the set of University Challenge, and an earlier scene involving a misguided reference to The Graduate, are particularly well done. I can't help feeling, though, that the movie missed a few good opportunities as well. I understand the need to streamline the story, but I can't help feeling that they streamlined too much: fun characters disappear not long after they're introduced, certain aspects of Brian's schoolyear are mentioned when they should have been shown, and so on.

All the same, I thoroughly enjoyed the movie, and highly recommend it for any fans of romantic comedy, British film, or movies with cool '80s soundtracks.

I found this movie quite charming -much to do with the fact that James McAvoy is the central figure in it...I truly think we'll find him in a lot of good films in the future, which is GREAT!-.
The movie's the story of a boy who struggles to find himself while growing up -falling in love and making mistakes on a university TV quiz show are trascendantal-
You can get easily related to it...even more if you have had interest in accumulating a lot of useless -yet fascinating- data in your brain to feel more intellectual or to guarantee yourself a "special" place in this world. Simple,sweet, funny and as I said before...charming!

James McAvoy has that affable quality which makes the viewer like him even when he is being a bit of a prat. That is true throughout this DVD. The storyline is a little "low key," as the adaptation of the book to the screen was not as effective as it could be, but the performances are strong, and the viewer will not feel "cheated" when he finishes watching the film.

Those of you who read the book may be a bit disappointed by its screen adaptation, an all to common occurrence when a book becomes a film.

Placing that comment aside and reviewing this film without use of a pretense, Starter for 10 is a cute, all be it a bit campy, British comedy about the bumps and hiccups brought by coming of age, finding ones future, and facing ones past. James McAvoy does a brilliant job of making his character lovably awkward. The subtle comedy, satirical character types and romantic interfaces make this a must see for any University Challenge fan (or anyone looking for a good laugh).

1 star off only because the book was better.

In the other two movies I've seen him in, James McAvoy has played a character with father issues (even Mr. Tumnus the Narnia faun had a few). Here he's Brian Jackson, a first year university student from a modest background who has always wanted to know "the right answer." To that end, he applies and is accepted to a good university where he joins an intercollegiate quiz team. In record time, he also manages to fulfill the first rule of starting school on your own: that you will make an idiot of yourself with both mind altering substances and people of the opposite gender, not necessarily in that order. He's also not fully processed the death of his father, with whom he used to watch quiz shows, and with whom he never felt he fully connected. Like other movies centering around a quiz show, the plot twist is fairly predictable. But I didn't care because McAvoy is so engaging to watch. I didn't care that the love triangle - will the sexually-naïve young man wind up with the blond bombshell with lots of cleavage or the quirky, politically-active brunette was only a surprise to someone who'd never seen a movie before. I didn't care that they didn't even try to make some of the deus ex machinas remotely plausible ("He got hit by a bus!") Because the characters are actually convincing as university students and not as something dreamt up in a screenwriter's studio. Even the voice over doesn't detract from the offbeat charm.

This is a slight film, but one well worth seeing for the fine performance by James McAvoy. A plain-looking nerd who goes off to college seeking to distinguish himself both as academically knowledgeable and, at the same time, as a ladies' man, he must strike a chord in the hearts of thousands of first year undergrads just like him. What McAvoy has going for him especially is his ability to ooze charm from every pore without being in the slightest degree sickeningly sweet. It is his memorable performance which distinguishes an otherwise pretty formulaic college comedy of heartbreak and eventual triumph.

This stylish and funny film does justice to David Nicholls' embraceably likable novel of the same name. (Though also released in the United States as A Question of Attraction.) Here James McAvoy plays Brian Jackson, a charmingly fallible young Englishman of working class origins who goes off to college in Bristol in the year 1985, and soon joins his school's quiz team, which is preparing to compete on the televised student game show, University Challenge. As he endures the usual first-year agonies and invents a few for himself, the trivia expert Jackson falls madly in love with the team's reigning beauty, the slightly conscienceless Alice Harbinson (an annoying but eye-catching Alice Eve) and meanwhile misses the obvious fact that he's much better suited for another girl, Rebecca Epstein, one of the campus' ever-protesting social leftists. The ups and downs of Brian's first year on campus, the pains of his growing up and moving apart from the life and people he'd always known, and the extent to which his driven involvement with the quiz team and its members (including a smug, victory obsessed captain) takes over his life make up the backbone of this coming of age love story. The soundtrack is almost a star in its own right, and features songs by The Cure, the Psychedelic Furs, The Smiths and other memorable eighties bands. Starter For Ten is such a fun, touching, likable presentation that I've reviewed it in three of its different incarnations here on Amazon (both the US and original release, plus now the film version) and in fact the very first Amazon review I ever did was for this novel. It's one of the best debut books I've come across in a long while, and the makers of this movie got darn near everything right. It's definitely worth seeing and worth buying!

I have a slight obsession with him, but the man can say more with the shift of his chin or tilt of his head than most popular actors. There were many cringe-worthy moments that brought back my own college years. What a pity that this was so overlooked here in the states.

I love James McAvoy, but I wish I could say this was a great movie. Although there were a few humorous scenes, the movie was, overall, disappointing. McAvoy did play the character well, but the storyline was my biggest issue. Watching this move made me feel more awkward and uncomfortable than I have in my entire life.

Very sweet and charming film -- a prefect choice for those of us that grew up in the 80s. I cannot wait to see more of James McAvoy.