CLEMENTINE'S REVIEWS

30th September 2009
Adventureland (2009)

Director: Greg Mottola
Writer: Greg Mottola
Starring: Jesse Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart, Martin Starr, Bill Hader, Kristen Wiig, Ryan Reynolds, Margarita Levieva

What are you if you're no longer a teenager, yet not quite an adult?

It's 1987. James (Eisenberg) is set to traipse through Europe for the summer holidays when his parents break the news they're unable to support him financially, and it's up to him to find a job if he wants to attend grad school. At the bottom of the barrel is a job at Adventureland, an old fun park run by an odd but kind couple (Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig), and staffed by holidaying students and twenty-somethings on the slacker career path. Amongst the menagerie is the overeducated and underemployed Joel (Martin Starr), and the beguiling and complicated Em (Kristen Stewart), who James is instantly drawn towards, but she is secretly seeing the handsome park mechanic, Connell (Ryan Reynolds).

The script channels Mottola's teenage years working at the original Adventureland in Farmingdale during the 1980s. The actual park has changed quite dramatically and the fictional Adventureland is drawn from Mottola's memories of the fading glory of a park. It really is a nice backdrop to the coming-of-age-in-your-twenties story. James is not yet worldly: he's untravelled, hasn't held a proper job, is romantically inexperienced - his life is still waiting to blossom. It's at Adventureland that he starts to learn the complexity of relationships. It's nothing that hasn't been done before, and they haven't done it better than its predecessors, but it is a very watchable subtle drama.

I would have liked some of the characters to be a more than veneers. The fun park's resident poster girl, glamorous Lisa P. (Margarita Levieva) has hints at more depth, but her direction didn't deliver the intrigue into her character, much less any word from her lacky. Em's relationship with her father and stepmother never develops. Her stepmother is never given a sympathetic angle, or any other angle to create depth of character. On a positive note, I was impressed by Kristen Stewart's naturalness. Her persona is unpretentious and unaffected on the screen.

Verdict: Familiar yet watchable subtle coming of age character drama with 80s nostalgia.