Topher Grace, as an MIT grad who has become the world's most overqualified L.A. video-store clerk, looks longer and leaner than before, and he's got a new confidence, too. He spends the film crashing beer bashes and pretending to be a big deal at Goldman Sachs, all to woo Teresa Palmer, who's like Kristen Stewart minus the storm-cloud moodiness. The more he lies, the faster he talks, but that's his rite of passage. (Any wuss can be sincere.) He also has to look after his pudgy-loser-sidekick buddy, played by Dan Fogler, who bounces off the walls like Jack Black and also evokes the smarmy-cute Curtis Armstrong from Risky Business. It gives you a jolt to recall, in this age of geek chic, that being unhip was once truly unhip.
