Cast delivers in weak rom com 'League'

Here's a breezy summer sex comedy that somehow jumped the gates and wound up as a spring break release.

Jim Field Smith's "She's Out of My League" is like a vintage Judd Apatow project, only not very well done.

It strives oh-so-hard to hit that Apatowian sweet spot between engaging, sympathetic characters and tasteless, vulgar funny business, and it partly succeeds, only because its committed cast makes the characters and plot a lot more fun than they deserve.

Employing a high degree of geek fantasy fulfillment, "She's Out of My League" ponders what might happen if a nice nerd really could be attractive to a fetching hybrid of Christie Brinkley and Anna Nicole Smith.

Kirk (played by Jay Baruchel, of the Apatow production "Knocked Up") and his best friends work for TSA, the airport security company.

The poor guy still pines for his callous ex-girlfriend (Lindsay Sloane) after two years.

All that changes when blonde bombshell attorney Molly (Brit actress Alice Eve) passes through security, and the men fall all over themselves to impress her.

Except Kirk.

He treats her like a regular person, and actually rescues her from the lolling tongues of his hormonal colleagues.

Realizing that she left her cell phone at the airport, Eve uses her friend's cell to call her own. She gets Kirk, who promises to hold the phone until she returns from her trip.

They meet. They talk. They dig each other.

This goofy, implausible matchup between a gorgeous attorney and a sad-looking high school graduate works because Baruchel puts a full-court press on the affable charm, and Eve sounds utterly convincing when she laments that she's tired of shallow guys who only want her for her less soulful attributes.

There is no formula here. No obvious villains. And Eve makes Molly smart enough to know her own powers so that she can use them for good - such as giving the unassuming Kirk a much-needed male ego boost from time to time.

Take the scene where Kirk brings Molly home to meet his icky brother, who asks if she's a prostitute before inviting her to strip down to her underwear and jump into the family swimming pool.

"I would," Molly says, "if I were wearing any."

Kirk's pals are a hoot, especially Devon (Nate Torrence, gifted with sheer comic presence), whose ultimate compliment is to fawningly compare women with Walt Disney's Princess Jasmine.

Kirk's other buds Stainer (T.J. Miller) and Jack (Mike Vogel) argue that Kirk can't be dating Molly, because she's a "hard 10" and he's a measly 5, and on their cosmic chart of romantic compatibility, no couple can be more than two points apart from each other.

See?

"She's Out of My League" has its moments of Apatow-like cleverness, yet Field Smith can't quite master the art of turning vulgarity into comic poetry.

A scene where Kirk suffers a major male embarassment in the company of Molly's parents is amusing, but no where near the hilarity of the gross-out antics in Apatow's production of "Super Bad."

"She's Out of League" just isn't super good.

"She's Out of My League"Rating: #9733; #9733; #189;Starring: Jay Baruchel, Alice Eve, Mike Vogel, Nate Torrence, T.J. MillerDirected by: Jim Field SmithOther: A Paramount Pictures release. Rated R for language, sexual situations. 106 minutes <div class="infoBox"><h1>More Coverage</h1><div class="infoBoxContent"><div class="infoArea"><h2>Stories</h2><ul class="links"><li><a href="/story/?id=365259">'Out of My League' star: No one's out of my league <span class="date">[03/12/10]</span></a></li></ul></div></div></div>