Adventureland
April 17, 2009
Greg Mottola follows up his smash hit “Superbad” with this bittersweet nostalgia piece about work, friendship, and first love in the summer of '87. Jesse Eisenberg stars as Mottola's surrogate, just out of college, who takes a job at a crummy local amusement park to help pay for grad school; there he meets an array of well drawn character types, including the moody, beautiful Kristen Stewart, who turns out to be his dream girl. But she has problems - her father is controlled by a shrewish new wife, her mother is dead, and she's sleeping with a narcissistic, much older mechanic (Ryan Reynolds, playing well against his romantic-comedy roots), which riddles her with self pity – and the boy isn't exactly experienced in romance, which makes the awkwardness all the more realistic and touching. Nothing from “Superbad's” raunchy craziness would lead you to suspect that Mottola was such a sensitive writer/director, but he has the same kind of love and care for his well developed characters as a Noah Baumbach, Eric Rohmer, or Woody Allen. This may be the smartest, sweetest film I've seen in 2009, no wonder that it's a flop at the box office; how can a movie this perceptive about young adult life possibly compare with the fake escapism of Vin Diesel and Hannah Montana?
By Adam Suraf