3/5 Very cute!
  by ChibiNeko (Whereever I go, here I am.)
I checked this out on recommendation of Netflix, who has yet to really steer me wrong on their recommendations. After a bit of an awkward start, I have to say that I really did enjoy this movie.

The movie follows Brian, a teen starting in Bristol & excited to get a start on living life on his own. Brian is also eager to take part in his favorite tv show 'University Challenge', where the best & brightest from each college go head to head in intellectual combat. Once there, Brian meets two very different women- the blonde & wealthy Alice as well as the politically active Rebecca. Attracted to both of them, Brian finds himself drawn more to Alice even as things show that he is more compatible with Rebecca.

The movie started off a little slow & for a while, I thought that maybe this would be the first time Netflix had recommended something I just didn't get into. Once the movie kicked into gear & I got a better feel for the characters, I was eagerly hoping for my favorite characters to have a happy ending.

It's really the supporting characters that I enjoyed most in this film, such as Brian's mum's boyfriend Des, an ice cream salesman & the UC leader, Patrick. The main characters are all enjoyable & I liked that they weren't perfect or entirely at fault for everything. The characters are beautifully flawed in the ways that count. (The soundtrack is awesome as well!)

Someone looking for the tons of fart & sex jokes that seem to be prevalent in most college romantic comedies will be disappointed. This isn't that type of film. If you want a movie where the characters are all beautiful & there's a definite good guy in it, this isn't that film either. If you are looking for a film that makes you think a little & makes you cheer on your favorite characters, this is the film for you.

3/5 Seeing a Jew First Time
  by Michael Kerjman (The Earth)
A funny movie of the eighteen year old making his way from a working class-vanishing provincial suburb to Bristol Uni of the Tetchier epoch and his interaction with world outside native English suburbia, sexual encounters on a plate.

Probably, this movie, darer for the Brits overlived an era of explicit lies still somehow dominating someone mythology of lazy dummies not willing to work as even slight possibilities of being taken on exist in a British Commonwealth anglosphere for mates privileged only, is still of an interest on various merits.


4/5 Fun fluff!
  by M. Elizabeth Wilson (Atlanta)
James McAvoy is charming -- I don't know if this film was released (or if it even was released) before or after his appearance in "The Last King of Scotland. He is a fine comic actor as well as a dramatic one -- as he proved in "Atonement." I think this is, as the Brits would say, candy floss -- but it's not dumbed down at all. Just a pleasant movie to enjoy! so -- enjoy!

5/5 Just what I wanted!
  by E. R. Stolpe (Pittsburgh, PA)
This movie was in excellent shape, sealed, and shipped satisfactorily. I would do business with these guys again.

4/5 upbeat youth comedy
  by Roland E. Zwick (Valencia, Ca USA)
"Starter for 10" is a charming coming-of-age comedy set in the Thatcher-era Britain of the mid 1980s. Brian Jackson ("Atonement"'s James McAvoy) is a brainy lad with an insatiable appetite for facts who leaves his home in Essex to attend university in Bristol. Almost immediately, he becomes a member of the school's academic quiz team, falls madly in love with his drop-dead gorgeous teammate, Alice, and catches the eye of an earthy social crusader by the name of Rebecca. Meanwhile, the team prepares for a trivia bowl competition to be broadcast on nationwide TV.

Adapted by David Nicholls from his novel and directed by Tom Vaughan, "Starter for 10" has all the drollery, dryness and wit we've come to expect from the best of British humor. McAvoy exudes a great deal of charisma as the intelligent young man who finds that shedding his lower-class origins and proving his smarts in a university setting is not going to be quite as easy as he thought it would be; and Dominic Cooper, Rebecca Epstein, Alice Eve and Benedict Cumberbatch match him in likeability and appeal. The movie also playfully captures the sights and sounds of the era in which it is set, with crowds of placard-waving young people dressed in "Flashdance" and New Wave-inspired attire protesting everything from apartheid to pollution to nuclear proliferation while synthesizer-laden music pounds away in the background.

But it is as a hilarious and insightful human comedy that the film earns our real attention and affection. And that `80s-infused soundtrack (featuring The Cure and The Psychedelic Furs, among others) may just be the inspiration you need to finally ferret out those long-discarded leg warmers and head bands from the back of your closet.