'STARTER FOR 10' IS JUST SOMETHING TO SNACK ON.

Byline: Glenn Whipp

Film Critic

The bland but likable enough coming-of-age trifle "Starter for 10" comes made by and for people whose feet tap involuntarily the second they hear the big beat of the Psychedelic Furs' "Love My Way." It's a movie that's unabashedly nostalgic for the oeuvre of John Hughes, which makes it an exercise in second-hand longing, given how many of Hughes' movies were themselves bittersweet odes to the past.

"Starter for 10" wants to give you the warm fuzzies, and director Tom Vaughan is more than happy to sacrifice any semblance to reality to make you smile. It's a view of an adolescence that any teenage male would die for, even though our hero, Brian Jackson (James McAvoy, making like a 1980s Michael J. Fox), lost his beloved dad to an early grave and has spent an inordinate amount of his life watching "University Challenge," a TV trivia game show that is the U.K.'s answer to "Jeopardy."

Brian casts off his working-class environs and leather-clad mates at the film's outset and heads for the University of Bristol. It's 1985 and Britain is in the thick of Thatcher, but politics don't play much of a part in Brian's life, outside of a friendship with the school's resident revolutionary, willowy brunette Rebecca (Rebecca Epstein), who is this movie's answer to Maggie Gyllenhaal's anarchic cookie baker in "Stranger Than Fiction."

Rebecca, incidentally, is the first Jew that Brian has ever met, but such exotica takes a back seat to the buxom charms of Alice (Alice Harbinson), a frothy Barbie doll with a great head of hair.

"Smoking's what I do best -- second best, anyway," Alice coyly tells Brian. After a line like that, it's no wonder Brian follows Alice around like a puppy dog.

The movie's slight story, adapted by David Nicholls from his own novel, follows Brian's pursuit of Alice and his dream of appearing as a contestant on "University Challenge." The filmmakers follow Hughes' teen-spirit blueprint to a tee, except Hughes, to his credit, didn't cast a drop-dead- gorgeous beauty as the hero's brainy fallback option. Between Rebecca and Alice, there's no way Brian could lose.

Where's the new Molly Ringwald when you need her?

Glenn Whipp, [phone].

[e-mail]

STARTER FOR 10 - Two and one half stars

(PG-13: sexual situations, language, scene of drug use.)

Starring: James McAvoy, Rebecca Epstein, Alice Harbinson.

Director: Tom Vaughan.

Running time: 1 hr. 32 min.

Playing: In wide release.

In a nutshell: John Hughes minus Molly Ringwald equals second-hand nostalgia.

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James McAvoy and Rebecca Hall star in the coming-of-age trifle "Starter for 10" that echoes the films of John Hughes.