Post by BIGFANBOY on Apr 3, 2009 2:03:50 GMT -5
ADVENTURELAND
Review by Gary Dean Murray
No one ever forgets that first summer job, the one where it is low pay and long hours. Everyone seems to hate it at the time but looks back on it years later with fond memories. Such is the script by SuperBad scribe Greg Mottola with his newest creation, Adventureland.
The story is set in 1987 and James (Jesse Eisenberg) has just finished college and is heading for grad school in NYC in the fall. All set to go to Europe with his best friend, our young hero finds that his parents are having a bit of a financial crisis and don't have the money for him to go away. He soon discovers that his degree is worthless in the real world and the only job he can get in his Pittsburgh hometown is at Adventureland, the local amusement park.
Though he wants a job as a Rides guy, he gets stuck working in the Games area. And there is definitely a distinction between Rides and Games, where all the cool kids are Ride Operators and the losers are Games Attendants. But he does make fast friends with the other losers stuck in the arena of prize winning.
Here we find out all the tricks of the gaming trade. Meaning we find that they are all rigged. Now, the idea of an idealized young man working in a less than honorable industry could have delivered some comic potential. Unfortunately the film goes into relationship mode.
James falls hard for Emily (Kristen) who everyone calls Em. She is the avant guard chick who has a constant smirk at everything in her world. But she does have a pregnant dogin' cool AMC Pacer. Though she seems above it all, she is just as much a victim of the ennui of Adventureland as everyone else. She's having a relationship with the older married guy (Ryan Reynolds) who repairs games but is really a musician. His big claim to fame is that he once jammed with Lou Reed. Since James is a big Reed fan, he wants to know all about it. James, like everyone else, never puts together the relationship between the two people he is around.
The film goes into teen angst mode fairly early on with relationships not going exactly as planned. James is asked out by the trophy girl of the Rides kids Lisa P. and realizes that the perfect girl isn't always the right girl. We get all the drug and drinking references along with the fighting boredom at any cost anxiety. Anyone who has seen films like Fast Times at Ridgemont High or The Last American Virgin know where all this teen driven hormone fest will end-up.
Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig play the managers of the place a couple who met at Adventureland so many years ago. They both love the park and see themselves as just a degree removed from all the kids who toil at their tutelage. There scenes are the ones shown in the previews and are the best part of the entire flick. It is a shame that they were used so little in Adventureland.
Jesse Eisenberg does a great job as being the overeducated kid with no real world experience. But one has to wonder just exactly he was doing in college for four years and not being more worldly. This naiveté would have worked if he were a recent high school grad but not a college grad. Kristen Stewart has become a worldwide star due to her lead role in Twilight, but here she plays much of the same character, just a tad more worldly. Here she has such a sad life but gets little sympathy from the audience with her performance. Again, Ryan Reynolds is wasted in an underwritten role. You know his story from the first frame.
I love the music and I loved the setting, but I hated just about everything else about Adventureland. It could have been a great ribald comedy about that horrible job that you look back fondly years later but it becomes a ba d low-rent episode of the OC without all the cool people. It needed a major rewrite where more comedy was focused upon. As it stands, it commits a cardinal sin, it is numbingly boring.
As a kid, I wanted to work at Astroworld, the local amusement park in Houston. I never got the opportunity. But I did spend a few days working at the county carnival, which cured all romantic notions of the 'cool factor' of being behind the scenes of rides and games. This film should do the same for every other dreamer who never got the chance.
Even though it is early, this is in the running for worst film of the year. There is no story, no comedy, no believable romance. Almost nothing works in this film which is the saddest element of Adventureland, a place with no adventure.
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