I like free things. I’m on a mailing list for Time Out New York that offers free advanced movie screenings. All you have to do is be one of the first people to respond and you get free general admission tickets They overbook so you have to be there early because there’s no guarantee you’ll get a seat.

I was a little late for the free screening of Starter For 10, meaning I arrived at the theater 10 minutes before the movie started, so my friend and I had to sit in the front row. Oh well, being really uncomfortable will just give me more of an impetus to get up and leave if the movie sucks. The movie, produced by Tom Hanks, centers around a small town working class Brit named Brian Jackson (James McAvoy). He’s going off to university because he wants to know everything. He loves to learn. When he was a child, he used to watch quiz shows with his dad, who has since passed away. He meets Alice Harbinson (Alice Eve) while trying out for the university quiz team. He helps her cheat on the entrance quiz and because of this, ends up as only an alternate while she gets a spot on the team. He doesn’t mind though because it’s not long till the rest of the team recognizes his quiz team chops. As a bonus, Alice, the pretty preppy blonde type, agrees to go out with him. Days earlier, however, he met Rebecca, a protest-y punk rock type who also likes him, but at this point he is too smitten with Alice to look twice at her. Thus begins the love triangle. This is where the story lost me. First, I did not believe that either of these girls would actually like him. Second, I didn’t buy that he wouldn’t automatically choose Rebecca. She was just so much cooler and prettier than the other girl. Regardless, I feel like I don’t have to tell you anymore about the plot because if you’ve ever seen a movie, you know exactly what’s going to happen here.

The movie is set in the 1980s, but it also was filmed in a 1980s style, which I thought was an odd and distracting choice. I kept thinking ‘who would choose this crappy instrumental synthesized garbage as background music’ on purpose? They only did it in the 80s cause they didn’t know any better. The movie has a couple of funny moments but all in all, it’s pretty predictable and a little too corny and the characters didn’t feel very flushed out. I enjoyed Rebecca Hall and all The Cure songs and it wasn’t so bad that I walked out. It would have been a long walk to the back of the theater and it didn’t deserve that grand of a gesture, though if I were you, I wouldn’t waste my money seeing this in the theater.