Gossip Sauce Sundance Report: Adventureland

We know that movies about losing “it” will never go out of style, but we also doubt they’ll ever reach the nadir (or quality) they hit in the 80s.

Adventureland has many trappings integral to the genre; drugs, summer boredom, excessive drinking, hormonal youth thrust together in close proximity. But it can’t touch the quality of Say Anything/Superbad/Almost Famous no matter how much writer-director Greg Mottola wants it to.

It’s a kinder, gentler teenage love story starring Jesse Eisenberg, who’s emerging nicely from puberty after The Squid and the Whale, and Twilight’s Kristen Stewart, whose anxious arm futzing is driving us up a frickin’ wall! Why don’t any of her directors tell her to knock it off with the nervous tic crap?

The film is about virginal James (Eisenberg), a college graduate who planned on spending his summer in Europe before starting grad school for journalism at Columbia, which is arguably the best program in the nation. Instead his parents tell him they’ve been downsized so Europe is out and grad school can wait. Umm, say WHAT? No parent on earth would tell their kid to forgo Columbia journalism school! Suspended disbelief, yo’ mama. But we digress…

In an effort to salvage his plans, James gets a job at Adventureland, a sad-sack amusement park run by SNL-ers Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig (whose names drew huge applause at tonight’s premiere, even more than Eisenberg or Stewart), who pop up sporadically for a jolt of needed humor, though their broad comedic style is out of place in the otherwise sedate film.

On his first day, he sees Em (Stewart) and does what every boy in a film would do: he falls instantly, irrevocably in love with her and coming of age clichés ensue. Martin Starr and Matt Bush pop up in the best friend/sidekick/Robin role while Ryan Reynolds is criminally underused and overdressed. He plays the park’s hot handy man. Where’s the slo-mo shot of him shirtless and covered in grease? We feel so gypped!

The film is somewhat salvaged by Eisenberg’s performance but the film is slow, unoriginal and unmemorable. It lacks the big laughs, deep cries, hot sexiness or true poignancy to make any sort of lasting impression.

In fact, we’ve already forgotten most of what we just watched.

Adventureland is as stimulating as the teacup ride for a twenty-year-old.