Adventureland
By: Amy Nicholson
It’s 1987, and the one thing a hip geek like recent college grad James (Jesse Eisenberg) can’t resist is a diffident beauty in a Hüsker Dü tee-shirt. Exchanging miserablist mix tapes with Em (Kristen Stewart) is the only joy balancing out James’ summer in the trenches of Adventureland, a crumbling Jersey theme park where both the visitors and the staff (particularly bosses Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig) are deranged twerps. (Parents Wendie Malick and Jack Gilpin backed out last minute of his European grand tour.) Writer-director Greg Mottola’s follow-up to Superbad feels even more lived in and authentic, and with good reason—Mottola had to do the same the summer before he went to Columbia. What makes Adventureland smarter and sweeter than your typical virgin-dude-must-screw comedy is its class consciousness (besides Eisenberg’s winning, if typecast performance); both James and Em know they’re destined for more than most of their coworkers, and the film shivers with the thread of snobbery and guilt. When James goes on a date with the hottest girl at the park, Lisa P. (Margarita Levieva), her midriff shirt can’t distract him from recognizing that her world is too small for him. Born from the trauma of Reaganomics, the teen films of the ’80s had the same awareness of the gulf separating the haves and have nots. After a decade and a half of everyone being generically middle class and horny, it’s good to see an unassuming charmer of film with a foot in reality, even if it isn’t comfortable enough to admit the world is just as segregated today. (Amy Nicholson)
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