I'm wrapping up the recent "movies I missed while abroad in Germany" posts with Adventureland. After graduating college, James (Jesse Eisenberg) learns that his parents won't be able to afford to send him to Columbia, where they're holding a spot for him as a journalism grad student. He gets a job at the local amusement park in an effort to save enough for tuition. While working there, he finds new friends in the likes of fellow Games employees Joel (Martin Starr) and Em (Kristen Stewart). His bosses (Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig) are pretty spacey, leaving most of the college-age kids to their own devices. James quickly falls for Em, who responds to his kind, unsure manner but holds herself back due to a secret affair. Their relationship develops tentatively amidst the backdrop of work-related drama, romantic liaisons, wise cracks, pot smoking, and cool 80's tunes.
Though advertised as "a hilarious comedy from the director of Superbad or whatever", really Adventureland is a bittersweet comedy/drama (dare I say... dramedy?) about an in-between time in the characters' lives. They aren't in school, but they aren't independent adults yet, either, and it's surely a scary situation. I can only imagine how I'll be coping with it 7 months, and indeed I think my nearness to post-college life made me more interested in the story, which is handled nicely with multiple interwoven arcs and kooky side characters. The conversations are realistic and relatable. I think Mottola balances the ups and downs of the story really well, eliciting a good amount of laughs while grounding everybody with familiar problems. My friend Nicole's comparison to Freaks and Geeks is definitely apt.
I guess I don't like Kristen Stewart that much. She is tolerable here, but I had trouble catching onto this wonderful quality she is meant to have, thereby warranting various characters' obsession with her. Her role is also weirdly written and not as well-rounded as it should have been. She is sort of all over the place. I dig the rest of the cast though, even though Martin Starr isn't in it enough. I think in general Adventureland is pretty good, but could be better. It's a nice depiction of struggling 20-somethings in a close-knit community and the happenings of an amusement park job, however I got the feeling the film wanted to say more than it actually did, and sort of lost its edge as it went on.
3.5/5
"Looking for a Kiss"- The New York Dolls
"Pale Blue Eyes"- The Velvet Underground
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Adventureland (2009)
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I'm creating a huge theme park dedicated to Jesse Eisenberg with different sections. You can visit Adventureland, or you can visit Zombieland, or you can visit The Squid and the Whale. DO YOU GET IT.
ReplyDeleteThe Squid and the Whale ride is awesome. Scary, yet enthralling.
ReplyDeleteGlad you dug Adventureland, Alex; give it 10 years, and I think you'll dig it even more. It seems as though the Superbad connection and/or pre-release advertising for this one turned a lot of people off.
Yeah I agree, this one was terribly mis-marketed. It is clearly more of a romantic drama than another Superbad. I thought Eisenberg and Stewart were both terrific and this film really left a good impression on me.
ReplyDeleteI thought this was one of the more underrated films of the years. Overall, I enjoyed its offbeat quirkiness. People may not like it because they expected more slapstick comedy like in Superbad, rather than more of a drama tale.
ReplyDelete"I had trouble catching onto this wonderful quality she is meant to have, thereby warranting various characters' obsession with her."
ReplyDeleteI think the character's appeal is her vulnerability. For Ryan Reynolds' character, it makes her more likely to sleep with him, a man beloved by the shiftless young males who work there but in reality a maintenance worker in his '30s who hides from his wife conducting affairs in his mother's basement. For Eisenberg's character, he is drawn to her vulnerability not because it might give him an "in" -- it is fascinating, I think, that James admits that he could have had sex, but he didn't love the person he had a chance with, which is one of several signs of the reversal of typical gender roles in this film -- but instead because it identifies her as a kindred spirit. James is drawn to the person beneath the confused mess that currently crushes Em, the person who would openly shame someone for using cheap anti-Semitism to bring down one of her friends, who is intelligent but is too wrapped up in her spiteful home drama to show it.
I think it helps to see this film more than once. I caught in in theaters and enjoyed it (I gave it a 4/5 I believe), but I recently went back and wrote an extended review and realized just how much the film gets right. I admittedly haven't gotten the chance to see many of the film's limited releases (I can only get to Atlanta every now and then and that's the only place in the Southeast where you've got a decent chance at seeing the most limited releases), but Adventureland is slowly making its way up the list of the movies I've seen into a top 20 if not top 10.
Jake: Thanks for such an in-depth response! I see what you mean about Em's character, but I guess I just didn't pick up on that aspect of it upon my first viewing. We'll see what a second viewing does!
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