Adventureland (Movie Review)

Movie Review
Adventureland
2009
Starring: Jesse Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart, Ryan Reynolds
Directed by: Greg Mottola

It’s never a good sign after watching a movie when the first thought that pops into your mind is that the movie could have been worse. This is the case with Adventureland. It could have been worse. If you were expecting Greg Mottola to pop out another Superbad, you’re in for a world of disappointment. It tries to be a bit more mature than Superbad, which I felt matured as the movie went along which made it good. Adventureland, on the other hand, tried to ram down our throats that this wasn’t going to be a movie about sex and social awkwardness despite having plenty of jokes centered around sex and social awkwardness. At least the acting is good which may surprise some. Then again, it could have been worse.

James (Jesse Eisenberg) is a smart kid who’s planning to go into a graduate program at Columbia University at the end of the summer. However, he gets some bad news from his parents that they won’t be able to help him out financially anymore due to his father receiving a demotion. Not only does this put his academic career in jeopardy but it ruins his plans to visit Europe for the summer that his parents had said they would pay for.

James realizes that he needs a summer job to pay for school. He tries everywhere but he has no experience so nobody wants to hire him. The only place that’s willing to hire him is Adventureland; the town’s amusement park. Even though he seems out of place there, he quickly makes friends. He especially gets close to Em (Kristen Stewart). She grows fond of him too but she’s hiding from him a secret relationship with the park’s maintenance man Mike Connell (Ryan Reynolds). Even though Em and James eventually become a couple, she continues to have a relationship with Connell despite her reservations about them sneaking around. As the summer winds down, the relationship begins to hit the rocks due to internal and external forces.

The major problem of the film centers around James. It’s not that Eisenberg did a horrible job with his role. In fact, he was really good. It’s just that his character doesn’t make sense half the time. He’s introduced as a socially awkward character that is more a hapless loser than anything else. However, there are times when he becomes more suave than Connell for no apparent reason other than to satisfy the needs of the film. It feels very unnatural for this character to have what seems like two distinct personalities. Eisenberg isn’t to blame for this one as it feels as if the character was horribly written and the director (Mottola handled both writing and directing responsibilities) didn’t do a good job manipulating the character to seem consistent.

However, the acting was really good for the most part. Eisenberg and Stewart are able to tell quite the story with just eye movements and facial gestures. Usually, younger actors concentrate on their voices and the movement of their limbs to show emotions but these two get it in that acting comes from the subtleties one can emote. There were a couple of times where the two of them were in Em’s car and they were able to have an entire conversation just by looking at each other (or, in some cases, away from each other). Their delivery of dialogue could have used a bit of work; especially Stewart who always sounded pissed off. Still, they performed better than expected and help make the film watchable.

Yes, the stars of the film made it watchable because the script tried really hard to sabotage everything. Many of the jokes fell flat. There were a couple of funny lines but it was like hearing bad joke after bad joke. In fact, it feels like more time was spent on writing bad jokes than was spent trying to develop the storylines within the movie. There is hardly anything about James and his family in the movie which would have made for an interesting side-plot considering James’s dad’s drinking and James’s accident while driving drunk. Little is made out of it and it could have made for an intriguing story to tell. Same goes for how Connell and Em and the details on how they originally hooked up. Nothing is really made of it which could have shed some light on Connell’s character instead of making him end up looking like a jerk at the end of the film; which is contrary to how the character acts towards James throughout the movie, all things considering. It just seems that if there was more time developing the script into something more balanced and more attention paid to the progress of the storyline arcs instead of trying to think up less-than-hysterical lines for Bill Hader to spout off, then the movie would have been better.

Greg Mottola’s Adventureland is a disappointment. It had potential to be really good but the script was not good enough. The cast was willing and on the ball but Mottola let them down. It’s not horrible enough for me to run through the streets and scream for people to avoid this movie. It has its moments and the performances are good. I’m thankful of that because it could have been worse.

☆☆