"Brian, I thought you were going to tell me you were gay."
In the new, horribly titled but spot-on funny British romantic comedy Starter for 10, a bright working-class lad, Brian Jackson (James McAvoy), pops up at his college dorm to find his new roomies in drag, waiting to haul him off to a party where everybody but him will be dressed as a vicar or nun. Set in that most unfashionable year 1985, and sporting a rocking 80s soundtrack (nirvana if you're a fan of The Cure), Starter has been damned by some critics as a British knockoff of the John Hughes school of teens with cute problems (The Breakfast Club ). To do so would be to miss one of the year's first laugh-out-loud funny films.
Brian's lucky that any college would have him. Dressed in his dead dad's castoffs, dismissed as a "wanker" by his prole on-the-dole buddies (for queer viewers, a chance to review acquaintanceship with The History Boys' Dominic Cooper and James Corden) and cursed with a penchant for quiz-show smartypants knowledge and a taste for women above his station, Brian is as likely a candidate for academic probation as for the posh perks of a Bristol University grad.
Having McAvoy narrate chunks of screenwriter David Nicholls' popular novel to show how out of sync Brian's aspirations are, Starter for 10 (a British Jeopardy ) throws him into the deep end of a pool filled with sharp elbows and over-inflated egos. Benedick Cumberbatch is hilariously pompous as Brian's chief quiz-show rival. The two literally bump heads in a Preston Sturges-quality physical gag.
McAvoy is piling up an impressive resume of leading-guy roles for an actor who doesn't at first glance possess leading-guy looks. The Glasgow-born actor has a Martin Short-like knack for turning the jester or sidekick part into a power position. Few reviewers have given McAvoy his due for supporting Forest Whitaker's Oscar turn in every frame of The Last King of Scotland, as Idi Amin's male wife. A lesser film would have given the dark-haired seducer Cooper the job of nailing the lasses, but Starter shrewdly lets Cooper be the gorgeous "best friend" who can pop stark naked out of the closet of Brian's blonde fantasy girl.
When a film is this good, one can nitpick as to why it isn't better. But Starter for 10's freshman director Tom Vaughan hits his targets. A loopy late-night scene has a first-time stoned-on-pot Brian exchanging ludicrously off-the-mark repartee with his would-be girlfriend's naked mom: "Mrs. Harbinson, are you trying to seduce me?" A quiz show subplot takes a unexpected right turn into pathos just when Hollywood would deliver the winning touchdown.
In a year where a Presidential candidate has copped not only to having smoked but inhaled, too, it's curious to see the American trailers for Starter for 10 skip the pot and gay gags included so seamlessly in the film's UK ads.