Film Review: Nerd fantasy never loses sincerity
Job at decrepit amusement park a ride through downside of the ’80s
"Adventureland" seems to be the first teen comedy inspired by the recession, even if the downturn depicted here is the hard-times Reagan year of 1987 (and even if some of the "teens" are college-age young adults).
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Abbot Genser/Miramax Films
Forced to earn his own money, lit major James (Jesse Eisenberg) bonds with an equally nerdy Joel (Martin Starr).
Rated R for language, drug use and sexual references
Length: 106 minutes
Released: April 3, 2009 NationwideScore: 3.5
Cast: Kristen Stewart, Ryan Reynolds, Bill Hader, Martin Starr, Kristen Wiig
Director: Greg MottolaProducer: Anne Carey
Writer: Greg Mottola
Genre: Comedy
Distributor: Miramax Films
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"Adventureland" was written and directed by Greg Mottola, who helmed the 2007 hit "Superbad," and it stars Jesse Eisenberg as an older version of the earnest youth he played in 2005's "The Squid and the Whale." The film occupies a position between those two predecessors: It's a horndog comedy in an indie hairshirt, or perhaps an indie-style coming-of-age tale juiced with the coarser comedy of a Judd Apatow production. (Punches to the groin occur frequently enough to qualify as a motif reinforcing the pain of the hero's virginity.)
Eisenberg is James, forced to postpone a trip to Europe and the possibility of Columbia grad school after his father takes a cut in salary. (James' shock over this development is a comic retake of a similar moment in William Wellman's Depression classic, 1933's "Wild Boys of the Road.")
Having to earn his own money for the first time, James -- a smart but naive comparative literature and Renaissance studies major who says, "I read poetry for pleasure sometimes" -- gets a summer job at Adventureland, a shoddy Pittsburgh amusement park closer to Libertyland than Six Flags.
There, he bonds with awkward kindred spirit Joel (Martin Starr), a Russian literature fan who gives a girl a copy of Gogol's "The Overcoat" as a post-makeout gift; envies cool handyman Mike (Ryan Reynolds), who claims to have jammed with Lou Reed; and falls for slim, mysterious Em (Kristen Stewart, of "Twilight"), a girl so cool she drinks Cuban rum and listens to Hüsker Dü. (The film includes songs from The Replacements and Memphis' own Big Star, as well as from such less-revered 1980s artists as Poison and Falco; the original score -- so wispy it barely registers -- is by Yo La Tengo.)
Like the Apatow films, this is, on one level, a nerd's fantasy-come-true movie, at least for lead nerd James (sidekick Joel doesn't fare as well, but sidekicks never do). But the semi- autobiographical story rings true in the sensitive hands of Mottola, a smart writer and director whose feature career was revived after Apatow picked him for "Superbad" on the basis of his only previous movie, 1996's "The Daytrippers." (It's easy to believe the young Mottola really would have made a mix tape of his "favorite bummer songs.")
As James' feelings for Em become serious, the story drags on too long, with the types of sure-to-be-resolved misunderstandings and recriminations familiar from too many TV dramas and sitcoms. But the film's sincerity never flags, and its only real sin is the criminal underutilization of Kristen Wiig, who may be the most talented comedienne since the heyday of Carol Burnett.
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