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Poor James Brennan (Jesse Eisenberg) is just coming to the realization that a college degree doesn’t exactly mean an instant wristband into the workforce. With his middle class suburban family unable to send him overseas for the summer, he gets a job at Adventureland, run by the husband & wife team of Bobby & Paulette (Bill Hader & Kristen Wiig). Further disenchanted that he’s chosen to run games rather than rides (which, to me, would seem like the more entertaining gig), James is given the lowdown on the park by the barely emotive, Joel (Martin Starr), which is enough to make anyone quit after a few minutes. James sticks around though long enough to find another fellow lethargic in Em (Kristen Stewart) who wastes no time in taking an interest in him and giving him an embarrassing erection in her pool.

Not everyone in Adventureland carries themselves as somehow above their work. The cool kids at the park are represented by Lisa P (Margarita Levieva, removing her bully hoodie from The Invisible to show off her beauty), the dreamgirl sexpot that every dweeb would love to take a shot at. She’s at least age appropriate for the wannabes. There’s also Mike Connell (Ryan Reynolds), the park’s repairman who has coasted on his rep for playing backup on a major record. As the married, blue collar dude with a little flash of success, he works in time between repairs to offer semi-sage advice to James, which may or may not complicate things considering he’s carrying on an affair with Em. Will James be just another guy with pride or will he be a man and win the girl of his dreams?

Those are questions Adventureland isn’t exactly interested in answering but rather playing out in tune with the films of its era. It’s not satire by any means or a counterargument that the films of John Hughes were teenage fantasies in a world of broken dreams. It’s a boy-meets-girl, boy-&-girl-get-involved-with-third-parties-so-they-can-argue-and-realize-they-want-each-other story. And a central flaw of the film is that neither the boy nor the girl are interesting enough so we wonder why they would be interested in the other to begin with. Availability, I suppose. James is your atypical awkward slice of lovelorn white bread. Em suffers from stepmommy issues and the kind of bad judgment that guys are often called to the carpet to have their noses rubbed in.

Adventureland certainly wasn’t designed to be the kind of laugh-a-minute riot that Mottola’s last film, Superbad, was. Take Hader and Wiig out of the equation and this is a film that falls squarely in the drama section, which puts it in the unfortunate position of having to work harder for us to give a damn about these people. As a budding romance it possesses none of the charms of Cameron Crowe or even John Hughes who, beyond living within the framework of cliches and happy endings, had an ear for young people’s ideas of what new love was all about. Mottola’s script, by contrast, is so desperate for earnestness that we become that significant other recognizing that our suitor is saying precisely what it thinks we need to hear to fall in love with it. Maybe you’re just an easy lay by nature, but I’ve heard enough movie lines in my day to know when its coming from the heart as opposed to just the page.

Eisenberg, despite being around longer than his predescessor, has the ineviable task of following Michael Cera from Superbad. Comparisons are way too easy even if the performances are of vastly separate tones. Where Cera had a more natural sincerity in his readings and awkward pauses, Eisenberg (who fit so perfectly into this type of role in 2002’s Roger Dodger) is using the playbook of a drama student who hasn’t quite captured what was so engaging about Hugh Grant’s early work. Kristen Stewart, meanwhile, has shown her limited cards too early into her burgeoning career. Her transition from Jodie Foster’s adrogynous-looking daughter in Panic Room to blossoming young woman has been filled with one disillusioned teen to the next, culminating in last year’s Twilight debacle. Stewart would be well-advised to find a character as interesting as her characters’ think they are and someone who just doesn’t scrunch their face and do a hair flip every time they are making a decision. Ryan Reynolds is charming enough in a way-underwritten role that should have served as the film’s backbone; a guy making temporary fixes on broken down symbols of youth. Only Hader and Wiig standout as the film’s sitcom neighbors popping in when the film threatens never to recover from its faux seriousness. Hader’s freakouts at the horse game and towards a potential James pummeler are the best moments and further advance the theory that he’s the new Dan Aykroyd, able to fit perfectly within the skin of any comic character in any medium.

After my screening of Adventureland at Sundance, I remember warming up to its tone more in the second half then its strained beginning. Alas, by the next day I was unable to remember exactly why that was. What I do remember is that while I was able to accept Mottola’s 180-degree turn from Superbad (in style, if not subject matter), I still didn’t believe in the actual feelings on display. We understood Jonah Hill’s feelings towards his rejection and why a girl might be into Michael Cera. They were also smart, lovable, identifiable characters in a film that had shades of darkness maybe not recognized on first viewing. Adventureland seems like its in a constant shade of darkness, with a summer in constant overcast reflecting only the light of its bored day-to-day employees. Only it never commits to that darkness and wants its characters to have their day in the sun despite the clouded reality they live in.

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originally posted: 04/03/09 00:00:00
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