Starter for Ten (2007)

Image credit: Giles Keyte

ROM-COMING OF AGE McAvoy (second from left) comes up with answers as a contestant on a British quiz show — and questions about love — in Starter for Ten

As a working-class university student in the 1980s who makes a few redeemable coming-of-age mistakes in love and life (and plays on the Jeopardy!-like game show from which Starter for Ten takes its title terminology), James McAvoy uses some of the same naïf-with-charm muscles he exercised in The Last King of Scotland. There's a tidiness and affection to this British homage to John Hughes movies and the youthful error of first going for the wrong, hurtful girl instead of the right, patient one. B