Johnny Severin and Nicholas David Brandt's otherwise clever and original script takes an unexpected turn at nearly every intersection, resulting in a funny and big-hearted coming-of-age romance.
Winning performances by a number of fresh-faced newcomers are almost but not quite enough to recommend The Secret Lives of Dorks, a fitfully amusing, more often shrill and overstated teen comedy that, like its dweeby protagonist, tries too hard to impress.
It’s arguable that the jocks and cheerleaders are this movie’s true heroes, without whom those pathetic dorks would never be able to find one another.
40
The Hollywood ReporterFrank Scheck
The Hollywood ReporterFrank Scheck
A formulaic comedy that displays as much subtlety as its title.
40
The DissolveNoel Murray
The DissolveNoel Murray
It has a good heart and a good cast, mixing Hollywood veterans with some of today’s better young TV stars. But the movie is strenuously, exhaustingly unfunny, in a way that makes its phoniness harder to bear.
30
Village VoiceChris Packham
Village VoiceChris Packham
The Secret Lives of Dorks, starring Jim Belushi, is, well, the Jim Belushi of high-school romantic comedies: indifferent, kind of exhausted.