In this charming oddball comedy, awkward teenage sci-fi fan Benjamin (Michael Angarano) yearns to escape his humdrum life in small-town Utah by becoming a published novelist. When his best manuscript, Yeast Lords: The Bronco Years, is plagiarised by Dr Ronald Chevalier (Flight of the Conchords's Jemaine Clement), an arrogant star author suffering from writer's block, Benjamin springs into action to prove the extraterrestrial yarn is his own original work. Napoleon Dynamite director Jared Hess once again trains his camera on misfit adolescents, mocking the obsessions of sci-fi geeks with genuine affection and gentle humour that leads to an unsurprisingly heart-warming pay-off. Angarano is winningly naturalistic as the jittery hero of the piece, but it's Clement's pompous and self-important Chevalier who steals the picture, with Sam Rockwell as ludicrous space warrior Bronco in fantasy sequences running him a close second.

A teenager attends a fantasy writers' convention where he discovers his idea has been stolen by an established novelist.