Adventureland (2009)

User Rating:

7.8/10   

Director:

Greg Mottola

Writer (WGA):

Greg Mottola (written by)

Release Date:

3 April 2009 (USA)

Genre:

Comedy | Drama | Romance

Tagline:

It was the worst job they ever imagined... and the best time of their lives.

Plot:

A comedy set in the summer of 1987 and centered around a recent college grad (Eisenberg) who takes a nowhere job at his local amusement park, only to find it's the perfect course to get him prepared for the real world.

Plot Keywords:

Summer | Amusement Park | 1987 | Summer Job | New York City

US Showtimes:

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Cast

Jesse Eisenberg	...	James Brennan
Kelsey Ford	...	Arlene
Michael Zegen	...	Eric
Ryan McFarland	...	Brad
Jack Gilpin	...	Mr. Brennan
Wendie Malick	...	Mrs. Brennan
Matt Bush	...	Tommy Frigo
Todd Cioppa	...	Velvet Touch Manager
Stephen Mast	...	Rich
Kristen Wiig	...	Paulette
Bill Hader	...	Bobby
Martin Starr	...	Joel
Adam Kroloff	...	Adult Contestant
Kristen Stewart	...	Em Lewin
Kevin Breznahan	...	Molly Hatchet T-Shirt Guy

MPAA:

Rated R for language, drug use and sexual references.

Runtime:

Argentina:107 min | USA:107 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

DTS | Dolby Digital | SDDS

Certification:

USA:R (certificate #39360) | Argentina:16 | UK:15 | Ireland:16 | Canada:13+ (Quebec) | Canada:14A | New Zealand:M | Iceland:12

Filming Locations:

Coraopolis, Pennsylvania, USA

Company:

Sidney Kimmel Entertainment

Trivia:

Director Greg Mottola originally planned to shoot the movie in the real Adventureland park, but later decided against it since the park had been so drastically remodeled since he had worked there.

Goofs:

Anachronisms: When Connell and James drive over to Connell's mother's house, Connell's car has a visible "You've Got a Friend in Pennsylvania" license plate. However, the car that Connell parks behind has a newer Pennsylvania license plate that was issued after 2000, despite the movie being set in 1987.

Quotes:

Em Lewin: [to James, after he has been punched in the balls by Frigo] What was that?
James Brennan: My life.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in "Saturday Night Live: Zac Efron/Yeah Yeah Yeahs (#34.20)" (2009)

Soundtrack:

Just Like Heaven

Pure, genuine magic

Inexplicably, some films appear to the viewer as intensely charged with personal feelings. I use the word 'inexplicably' because there may be general dispositions of the movie that help this notion, like the use of particular locations and the choice of a specific time period or the construction of some characters. However, it mostly has to do with something more visceral, and it occurs generally in pieces by writer/directors. Gregg Mottola's "Adventureland" could very well be (actually, it is) a film of that type, but there's no genre that defines this. Setting in the eighties and introducing main and supporting characters that are well rounded, Mottola manages to create a state of mind and takes us back to the time and place of action: his intentions are genuine; his feelings seem completely exposed during the whole ride and the result in purely magical.

A lot of this also took place in the director's previous film (and one that I should have written about), "Superbad". The movie exists in a different time if you don't think about the presence of the young and recognizable actors of the New American Comedy -that's how some people tend to call Judd Apatow related products- like Seth Rogen and Michael Cera; watching it means getting involved in a world of innocent fun and true friendship. These two things are fundamental in "Adventureland", which is a better film than its predecessor simply because Mottola takes it the whole way. He intentionally gets away from the comedy genre labels, casts more versatile and –in a sense- respected young actors for the main roles, keeps the genre's wild card (the name is Bill Hader) for the supporting department, gives the rest of the supporting players to names less recognizable than the ones mentioned above and brings Ryan Reynolds as the 'star' name in the ensemble. Reynolds is very low key, and fits perfectly for the tricky part he has to play.

We are now in the eighties. The clothes, the attitude, the music and the same songs (that at accurate moments accompany the situations the characters are living) being played over and over again make it clear. Jesse Eisenberg, so good at looking as someone from that time in "The Squid and the Whale" and simply so good in "Roger Dodger", a key figure among independent young actors, plays the role of his life as James; a quirky, intellectual twenty-something virgin (it's a key word in the movie) whose highest virtue and worst defect is the same: sincerity. Because life sometimes sucks, James ends up working in an amusement park for the summer. He needs to collect money and he ends up living a summer of innocent fun and true friendship, with an added spark of love. Once the viewer becomes familiar with James and he meets Em (the beautiful and talented Kristen Stewart, so charming in "Catch that kid", so precise in "Zathura", so intense in "Into the wild", fantastic in "In the land of women", so good in "Twilight" and even better here), we can imagine where the story goes.

Please understand that I don't want to tell you anything, but it's important to say that it's not so simple, and at the same time it is. "Adventureland" has a predictable structure, a lineal narrative just as "Juno", but it's not as complex as the film by Jason Reitman because it's less preconceived. The characters in "Juno" where intrepid and memorable because Diablo Cody intentionally wrote them that way, sitting in her house and knowing that she had something great in her hands that Reitman carefully and dedicatedly put on screen. Gregg Mottola's script (the whole movie actually) is so charged with an autobiographical sense that his feelings take over: the main characters are not well rounded because they were created intentionally with that purpose, they seem three-dimensional to us because they're constantly speaking their mind and we feel it; the stereotypical characters that sometimes appear are a requirement for the director's intention of 'taking us back' and they don't speak phrases in vain.

For this reason, "Adventureland" can never be a 'coming of-age film', just as Cameron Crowe's "Almost Famous" wasn't. It can never be. It's filmed with too much romance, it's too flawed in many parts, and that's what makes it too great. As it happened to William in Crowe's movie, there are no life lessons for James here; just experiences that he takes to the long journey that will be the rest of his life.