Adventureland (I've Finally Seen It!)

Let’s begin with this. The DVD cover for Greg Mottola’s Adventureland contains everything I despise in a DVD cover. Observe:



Let’s begin with “Unrated Bonus Features”. Whoever started this trend of throwing the word “Unrated” on the DVD cover of every R-rated comedy should throw themselves into a wood chipper. It is nothing more than a ploy to make teen boys think that by getting this DVD they will see some female mammary glands, when often unrated DVDs barely include any additional footage worth mentioning. Not to mention Adventureland isn’t even advertising an unrated version of the film, but unrated BONUS FEATURES! Stop the presses! Dude, everyone gets TOTALLY topless in the “making-of” documentary!

Moving on to the next claim: “Killer music from: David Bowie, The Cure, INXS and Lou Reed!”. Honestly? You’re advertising that your film has an awesome soundtrack? Do you see Scorsese throwing on the Goodfellas DVD cover: “Killer music from: Tony Bennett, Donovan, The Rolling Stones and Cream”? No. This reeked of overcompensation. I haven’t even mentioned the horribly photoshopped figures on the cover of Ryan Reynolds, Jesse Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart, Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig. For good measure there’s even an obnoxious quote from The Washington Post and the inevitable “From the Director of Superbad!”. Your mama tells you to never judge a book by its cover, but when the cover is an orgy of everything that is wrong with the world it’s hard not to go in expecting a bad film.

Well, your mama was mostly right. Adventureland is a good movie. Not VERY good, but it shows a director of enormous promise, and the performances are able to convince you that this is a film worth watching. It tells a convincing story with convincing characters and I cared at film's end. This is the first film by Greg Mottola which is entirely the work of Greg Mottola, and he's a legitimate talent.

Jesse Eisenberg plays James Brennan, a college graduate who is about to go on a trip to Europe with his friend, then he will attend grad school at Columbia. One problem: His father was demoted, and no money for James. He is forced to spend his summer at home, where he must find a minimum wage job so that he can pay for grad school. He ends up working at Adventureland, where he meets various characters including Emily, played by Kristen Stewart, who you may know from some vampire movie or something.

Love stories in film are a dime a dozen, as we all know. In fact, pretty much every movie. What distinguishes good ones from bad ones is whether or not these seem to be two people who could plausibly fall in love or if they end up doing so because they are the two actors on the poster. Sadly, most of the time they fall in the latter, and the first few interactions between James and Em rang a little false, but once the relationship dug a little deeper I was pretty convinced.

The performances are shockingly good here, Jesse Eisenberg makes the case that he does Michael Cera BETTER than Michael Cera. Kristen Stewart actually smiles (!) quite a bit in this movie, and I forgot she spends her day job staring longingly into the eyes of Robert Pattinson. Ryan Reynolds plays the maintenance man at Adventureland, and while this performance is hardly a revelations it has him playing a normal person. In most other movies his role would be that of a pure villain, but here he’s just a guy. A sleazy one, but not necessarily a receptacle for audience hatred. Martin Starr (Freaks and Geeks, Party Down) gives the best supporting performance as Joel, the owner of a Russian literature degree. Also notable are the performances of Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig as the husband and wife team who manage Adventureland. They always get a laugh, but sometimes the movie relies on them a little too much for humor, occasionally when the movie doesn’t need it. They’re a little too wacky to inhabit the relatively realistic world around them.

This brings us to the creative side of the film, and the screenplay by Greg Mottola, his first, is better at capturing ordinary conversation than at creating humor. I doubt he wrote a lot of the scenes with Hader and Wiig. He does, however, create a real honesty about the behavior of the characters. It might serve him better to go a dramatic route in the future, as it’s these moments when the film feels more authentic. This is strange, as his past directorial work includes a few episodes of Arrested Development, and the brilliant Superbad. In fact, I am convinced he is the sole reason Superbad even works at an emotional level. Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg don’t strike me as the type. Mottola’s direction here is great as well, capturing the 80’s without turning it into a vision in bright colors. This universe doesn’t look too different from modern day, and the use of the “killer music” is actually quite impressive.

By the end of the film I was rooting for the characters, and that is saying something considering my feelings going in. There is a warmth to this movie not hinted at by the obnoxious colors and lettering on the DVD cover. I barely laughed at this movie, but these characters felt honest to me. It’s obvious this was a very personal project for Mottola, and it comes out feeling as such. It doesn’t cut particularly deep, but as the portrait of a summer in the life of a young man stuck somewhere he doesn’t want to be, it’s reasonably impressive. Just throw away the cover.

Rating: (out of 4)