Adventureland (Jesse Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart, Ryan Reynolds, Bill Hader) – The genre known as reefer comedies or grunge comedies has emerged as the primary film comedy vehicle of the past decade. They include movies like The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Superbad, Pineapple Express and Knocked Up just to name a few. Inevitably, variations on this theme – emblemized by gross, marijuana-filled, and sex-laced teen-aimed farces – had to emerge. In the last month, I Love You, Man and now Adventureland have been released, both of which contain elements of the reefer comedies – heavy on the pot – but relying less on grossing out the audience and more on traditional romantic comedy devices to give patrons a more rewarding experience. Adventureland is a college coming-of-age comedy about a diverse band of post-teen kids working the summer at an amusement park in Pittsburgh. Some are college graduates with majors in obscure disciplines on their way to graduate school. Others are nerds with no future plans. All are sex-starved and lost in their own ways. Really, the Adventureland park is merely the setting for exploring the relationships of the characters and the little mini-dramas that play out among kids making life choices.
The main characters are James Brennan (relative newcomer Jesse Eisenberg), Em Lewin (played by Twilight’s Kristen Stewart, a dead ringer for a young Mary Louise Parker), Mike Connell (played by Ryan Reynolds, recently married to Scarlett Johansson, and the break-out star of Definitely Maybe). James is the brilliant college grad on the way to Columbia University for graduate school who is still a virgin and a nice kid to boot with a marijuana habit that he thinks makes him the one thing he is not: cool. Em is two painful years removed from her mother’s tragic death and having an affair with a married maintenance worker at the park: the aforementioned Mike Connell. Mike’s claim to fame is that he supposedly played guitar on some hit record, but it’s really a front for picking up young women working at the park. There are other characters, largely friends of Jesse’s who are childish or nerdy. Both the comedy and the drama come from the characters put into contrived situations. Jesse’s father got demoted from his high-paying job and may not be able to pay for graduate school let alone his college graduation present. Em’s step-mother is difficult to like and her father is a wimp. Shot in Pittsburgh at the amusement park at which I spent many a summer day, Adventureland is from writer-director Greg Mattola, who directed Superbad, and who went to Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Mellon University and to graduate school at Columbia. Mattola worked at the Adventureland amusement park on Long Island (featured in the movie Music and Lyrics), borrowing heavily from that experience to create this film. The movie is good, far better than the old-style reefer comedies, including Mottola’s own. As today’s comedies go, this is one of the best of recent years right along with I Love You, Man.