Adventureland

Review by Loc

It’s a little bit sad realizing how old you’re getting. It didn’t seem so long ago that fun, nostalgic flicks focused on times too distant for me to truly relate to. The 60s, the 70s, free love, bad hair, whatever the case, looked fun even if I couldn’t directly understand the eras. Nowadays, Hollywood is churning out 80s based nostalgia, and that’s scary. This isn’t The Breakfast Club or Sixteen Candles, comedies in contemporary settings. Nope, this is stuff looking back, making light-hearted fun of the fashion, the music, the hair, everything that made the Regan-era. The scary thing is that I know all about it because I actually lived through it. Quick hit: the latest nostalgia, indie dramedy isn’t quite rad, but it’s decent.

Adventureland focuses on a cast of characters slight older than you might expect, but who look younger than any Michael Cera-starring comedy that you’ve seen. Centered on James, played by Jessie Eisenberg, Adventureland follows his “coming of age” story during his pre-grad school summer. Instead of going on the clichéd backpacking trip through Europe, James is forced to find a summer job after his parents inform him of financial difficulties. After searching for any type of employment, James is only able to land a job at the local amusement park. And not even a cool job like manning the rides, nope James only gets to handle various gaming booths.

What follows is the supposedly deep, vaguely insightful trials of James and the misfits of the park. He makes connections with a couple of the fellows, he falls for Bella from Twightlight, and lusts after some other chick doing her best Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam impression. Then you get some funny moments with Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig as the park managers. And lastly, you get some darkly adult moments starring Ryan Reynolds, the prerequisite “cool older guy” of the flick.

The strangest thing about this flick, the thing that leaves this a little off-kilter, is the mismatched setting: college graduates experiencing high school issues. Why? There’s no apparent reason for this, other than the subplot involving Ryan Reynolds, and maybe that was the supposed hook of the film. However, everyone else is going through first date, first kiss, sneaking out, and secret house party hijinks that you would expect to wrapped around American Pie/Superbad settings. In the end, it doesn’t make the film bad, but it creates a weird experience when ideas clash and crash the mood.

Yet, the flick is decent for what it is. There are tender moments and funny moments, but most of these are wrapped around long periods of nothingness. And that’s not an existential comment, that’s a statement of fact. You’ll have times where James is sitting at the park, trying to make it through the mundane boredom, and you’ll be bored right alongside with him. Maybe he’s a really good actor! Probably not.

Overall, Adventureland is a movie that sits there. Highly touted when it first arrived at the theaters, Adventureland doesn’t quite live up to its critical acclaim. Then again, it was placed in that rare realm of Juno-Waittress-indie-flick-greatness, and those flicks weren’t really that great. So maybe Adventureland lives exactly where it should be, in the company of those overrated-but-still-decent movies. Out of a roll of 100 quarters, Adventure wins the smallest stuffed animal with 60 quarters.