Adventureland
Posted by Gary Sundt on May 6, 2009
Jesse Eisenberg and Kristen Stewart eat cookies in Adventureland.
As Printed in The Lumberjack on April 9, 2009
by Gary Sundt
Adventureland is a film I enjoyed far more than I anticipated. To clarify, I didn’t walk in with low expectations, but I thought I was going to see a different movie. Writer/director Greg Mottola hit the comedy scene big with Superbad two years ago, and I expected similarly foul-mouthed and over-the-top antics in his latest film. But Adventureland has a different agenda, and it’s made up of college-age crisis, early-20s malaise and a whole lot of heart.
The movie stars Jesse Eisenberg as James, a recent college graduate who is ready to go on his European vacation when his parents inform him that due to a recent salary cut at work, the family budget has tightened. This means that a) they won’t be able to pay for the trip, and b) they won’t be able to pay for graduate school, meaning he should probably seek summer employment. After a lengthy search, the most James and his degree in Renaissance Studies can get him is a job at Adventureland, the lame local amusement park where the games are rigged and corndogs are not to be trusted. The clientele are mostly dumber than the employees, who ease the pain by drinking, smoking pot and having sex with one another.
Of course, James has to be a virgin, because what greater conflict is there than aging with one’s virginity still intact? As such, he is always on the prowl for the opposite sex, and finds a particularly intriguing love interest in Em (Kristen Stewart), who is also stuck for the summer while she waits desperately for school to get back in session. James and Em, along with their stoner/genius coworker Joel (Martin Starr), take solace in one another while dealing with the colorful array of colleagues, including James’ best friend, Frigo (Matt Bush), who has a penchant for hitting him in the groin; the park’s managers, Bobby (Bill Hader) and Paulette (Kristen Wiig); the park tramp, Lisa P. (Margarita Levieva); and the maintenance man, Connell (Ryan Reynolds), who may be married but maintains a penchant for the lady employees of Adventureland.
The romance between James and Em speaks to the complicated nature of college-age relationships. People tend to be a little broken at this point in life, and are trying to find romance in the midst of putting themselves back together. Adventureland doesn’t pull any punches when it comes to the troublesome details that make us who we are, and Mottola has written characters that are well-rounded and flawed, and have a full and realistic spectrum of complicated emotions. Every actor in the cast does especially fine work with the material, and manifest real people rather than exploiting easy archetypes.
My only gripe with Superbad, as is my trouble with most high school movies, was that it muddled up a realistic portrayal of a time in life that everyone experiences with blatant unrealism. This isn’t to say I don’t laugh, but this sort of storytelling always disconnects me in some way. The genius behind Adventureland, then, is that there aren’t a million jokes a minute, making room for real characters to develop. Mottola has a sweeter and more personal story to tell this time around, and I think it’s a better movie.
