Adventureland

Adventureland is writer-director Greg Mottola’s follow-up to the hilarious Superbad which cast a rosy glow around the high-school experience and the friendships forged there, but with his second feature, Mottola takes a darker, more somber trip down memory lane to the time after college graduation.

Overeducated virgin, James (Jesse Eisenberg), is forced to get a job at Adventureland, the abhorred local amusement park, when he returns home after graduating college and his plans for a summer Europe trip collapse. In Adventureland he is surprised to learn that most of the people working there are just like himself: smart kids with the bad luck of being stuck in a menial job all summer. He meets the very sexy Em (Kristin Stewart) who is on break from NYU, Joel (Martin Starr) who has already accepted the sorry fate James is struggling to escape, Lisa P, the hottest girl in town, and a whole gaggle of hapless carnies. His summer quickly turns into a blur of partying and bad-decision-making dotted with small victories and humiliations.

Not since 1994’s Reality Bites has this best-forgotten post-college period been highlighted in a mainstream film (if you can think of one, by all means leave a comment!) and Mottola drew from his own personal experience to write the movie. (Do the math: Adventureland is set in 1987. Mottola b. 1964. If he was 23 at college graduation, then 1964 +23 = 1987!) It takes a brave man to revisit this period of life because of how badly it sucked: all of your expensive education proves useless on the job market, you are forced to take a menial job that you consider insulting, humiliating, and necessary. Your relationships with your parents shift to center around financial logistics, you realize their lives went on fine without you, and all of your big plans for the future crash and burn. So you party to calm your torrid soul, but drinking and drugs have lost their luster from overuse in college and you wind up in a cycle of self-destruction and self-loathing. (If this doesn’t sound familiar then BananaWho had it rough.)

Adventureland itself, a campy old-fashioned amusement park, is designed to bring fun and pleasure, but in the film it is only a source of pain and humiliation for everyone who toils there. The handheld camerawork captures the psychedelic candy colors, junk food, games, and rides that induce a sort of anhedonia on its employees, and the film paints Adventureland as a cesspool of failure, warning through its pathetic long-time carnie characters that success is only possible outside its gates.

Jesse Eisenberg, who you may remember as the vacuous teenaged asshole in The Squid and the Whale, shows us his vulnerable side, and it is certainly refreshing to see someone other than Michael Cera in a role like this one. Kristin Stewart, whose signature acting gesture is to compulsively run her hand through her hair and stumble self-consciously over her lines, still manages to be sexy and likeable. Mottola amped up the anhedonia factor by casting comedy actors Bill Hader, Kristen Wiig, and Ryan Reynolds, but kept the comedy to a bare minimum, creating the distinct and intentional sense that we are missing out on something—some joy or comedic relief that is just out of reach.

But the movie isn’t all self-loathing and sorrow—there were forgiving bittersweet moments between the characters when they are not worrying so much about the future and instead resign themselves to enjoy each other’s company. Existential, yes, but Mottola shines when it comes to nostalgia.

Adventureland ends with the promise that things will get better (which, for Mottola, is true.) The movie may not say anything about human nature, but it puts a common experience into perspective, hopefully allowing us to forgive ourselves, our parents, and each other for our shortcomings during that shitty shitty time. But next time you are at an amusement park, bear in mind David Foster Wallace quoting John Barth’s Lost in the Funhouse and ask yourself, “For whom is the funhouse fun?” -CH