So much of the film's success is due to the star-making performance of Reece Daniel Thompson as Hal Hefner, a sweet, earnestly driven suburban New Jersey teen with a word-swallowing stutter, a peculiar home life, and an unexpected opportunity to become a hero. Watching this kid superbly navigate Hal's random stammer while trying to stay afloat in a world where everyone seems to be operating from his own distinct planet, makes you wonder just how someone so young learned to act this well. Sure, there have been plenty of terrific performances from teens, tweens, and younger on screen, but Thompson's is so self-aware and genuine—yet so oddly emboldened—that he lands in quite rarified territory.

Hal's life, which is mostly spent ducking his semi-psycho older brother Earl (Vincent Piazza) and fading into the high school woodwork, gets a jump start when the debate team's star yakker Ginny (Camp's Anna Kendrick) recruits the unsuspecting stutterer to join their fast-talking crew. Hal, who can barely get out the words to order lunch much less argue high-level political issues, is thrown for a loop by the hyper-confident Ginny, who can compress an eight-minute argument into ten seconds without breaking a sweat (using a dizzying debate technique called "spreading"). Ginny sees something in the bright, if tongue-tied Hal, believing he can fill the void left by the school's debate god Ben (Nicholas D'Agosto), who vanished after crashing and burning at the state's High School Policy Debate Championships. Hal, meanwhile, sees hope and a way into an inner circle he could have only dreamed of entering. He's also enormously smitten by the cute, wildly driven Ginny, who seems to have no time for anything as "trivial" as romance.

This is only the start of Hal's excellent adventure, though, which doesn't follow any traditional course, yet finds equal parts joy and angst in its host of eccentrically funny and deadpan moments. Whether trying to maneuver a kiss out of the distracted Ginny, observing his newly-divorced mother's (Lisbeth Bartlett) goofy romance with Korean lawyer beau Judge Pete (Stephen Park), staying alert around Pete's sexually-ambiguous teen son (Aaron Yoo), or tracking down MIA debater Ben (who's moved to the "big city" —Trenton!), Hal grows in mini-leaps and bounds in front of our eyes. By the end, when he has a touching heart to heart with his dad (Denis O'Hare), we know Hal's on the road to better things—and that he'll get there in his own imitable way.

Though, in reality, Hal would likely be seeing a more competent speech therapist than the school's well-meaning but hapless Mr. Lewinsky (Maury Ginsberg), it's one of the picture's few false notes. Writer/director Blitz (himself an ex-stutterer), with able support from his awe-inspiring cast, cinematographer Jo Willems, editor Yana Gorskaya, and composer Eef Barzelay, has crafted a special little picture that resonates long after it's over. Any movie that can make the morose "Battle Hymn of the Republic" feel like some hip new chartbuster, certainly knows how to make magic.

— GARY GOLDSTEIN