Adventureland is a perfectly good comedic first-love story incorrectly sold as an uproarious teen comedy like writer-director Mottola's last film Superbad. There are some real laughs but they are downplayed to tell an understated coming-of-age story. It turns out that college graduates and not just high school students can be awkward.
Jesse Eisenberg seems to be playing the same role he played in The Squid and the Whale. Here he's James Brennan, a recent comparative literature graduate who is going to Columbia in the fall (of 1987) for journalism grad school. He reads poetry for fun and still has his "scarlet V" and is naive enough to bring it up. He needs to raise money and in spite of his letter of recommendation from his lawn mowing job, finds the only thing he's qualified for is working at Adventureland, a local PIttsburgh amusement park.
He makes friends with his co-workers, the geek, the hot guy, the hot girl, the obnoxious guy, the cool understated girl. His co-workers can all agree that it's a crappy summer job. While I missed Twilight, I've seen Kristen Stewart in 5 other films (The Safety of Objects, Panic Room, Zathura, Into the Wild and Jumper) and don't remember her at all. Here's she's "Em", the quiet cool girl and does a good job. The characters have more depth than the easy cliches they could be, but I kept expecting to get more background to explain their actions.
It's set in 1987 and the 80s soundtrack definitely helped and the 80s clothing wasn't played up too hard.
It's a short film at 107 mins, but I enjoyed it, but I"m sure in a month I will have forgotten it.
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