This romantic comedy, based by David Nicholls on his popular book and directed by Tom Vaughan, is about a working-class boy (James McAvoy) with advanced general-knowledge skills honed by his now dead father, who deserts his friends to go to university.

There, he appears on University Challenge, falls in love with the wrong girl and then finds the right one. Life and love teach him valuable lessons.

Set in the Eighties, it relies almost entirely on its players rather than a justabout-sufficient but rather plonking cinematic style.

Luckily the performances are fresh and accurate enough to provide some consistent entertainment. While it is difficult to dislike this film, there's a strange lack of ambition about it that stops it being memorable.

But McAvoy is totally believable as our bright if clumsy hero, who makes a terrible mess of romancing his blonde teammate (Alice Eve) and stumbles badly before gaining the affections of his more politically conscious true love (Rebecca Hall). There are also good portraits from Catherine Tate as his worried mum, and Dominic Cooper as his unemployed friend.

What, with an excellent imitation of Bamber Gascoigne from Mark Gatiss and a New Wave soundtrack in the foreground, the whole seems to make at least as much observational sense as the recent film adaptation of The History Boys, even if it aims considerably lower.