His Take/Her Take: Adventureland

Worth the price of admission, or a waste of time? Brian McKechnie and Suzanne Ellis offer you their take on the latest movies hitting screens. Read their reviews every Friday, exclusively on CityNews.ca.

Let Brian and Suzanne know what you think of His Take/Her Take via email at brian.mckechnie@citynews.ca or suzanne.ellis@citynews.ca .

ADVENTURELAND

Rated R
Cast: Jesse Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart, Bill Hader, Kristen Wiig
Directed by: Greg Mottola
Official Site IMDb

Set in the summer of 1987 a recent college grad (Eisenberg) takes a job at an amusement park when he can’t afford to go to Europe with his friends.

Brian’s Take

*** out of 5 stars
 
I went into Adventureland expecting a crude comedy in the realm of Superbad (director Greg Mottola’s last film). I left feeling a little ripped off.  The film takes place over the summer of 1987 and is based on Mottola’s own experience working at the real Adventureland (in Farmindale, NY not Pittsburgh as portrayed in the film). Questionable rides (and rumours of people being maimed on them), bad music, games you can’t win (the hoop is bent, the hats are glued on, etc.) and doped-up employees who don’t really give a crap – how can this not be funny? The truth is the film has a lot of heart (and drama) and not a lot of laughs. The sooner you get over that fact the sooner you’ll realize Adventureland is worth checking out.

The few funny moments the film does have all seem to come from Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig who play the managers of the theme park. Their brilliant timing and on-screen chemistry really shines in Adventureland (both actors currently keep Saturday Night Live worth watching each week). Martin Starr is another stand-out when it comes to laughs. This is the guy who couldn’t shave in Knocked Up and his deadpan/spaced out approach is welcomed in any movie. Unfortunately Jesse Eisenberg comes across as a poor man’s Micheal Cera. Scenes where he’s allowed to be the sweet guy work well but when it comes to laughs he’s just not funny. Kristen Stewart turns in a typical Kristen Stewart performance. She’s mousy, jittery, has a lot of baggage and never really finishes a sentence (her legion of Twilight fans should help the film’s success though).

If you’re looking for a stupid comedy (as suggested by the ad campaign) you will be disappointed. Although there is a lot of drinking and pot smoking the real story is one of love, friendship and coming-of-age and Mottola handles that better than adolescent fart jokes.

Suzanne’s Take

** out of 5 stars

We’ve all had one in our lives – that crappy summer job where we performed menial tasks for minimum wage, the experience made barely tolerable by our equally miserable co-workers. Imagine that gig is working an amusement park game and you have the gist of Adventureland, written and directed by Greg Mottola ( Superbad).

Set in 1987, Adventureland‘s story about a bright high school grad forced to take a position at the titular theme park to earn money for college is reportedly inspired by Mottola’s own life experience, although it’s unclear just how many of the embarrassing scenarios protagonist James (Jesse Eisenberg) gets into were drawn from the filmmaker’s youth.

Eisenberg takes a page from the Michael Cera playbook as the mumbling, painfully awkward James, who develops a crush on Em ( Twilight‘s Kristen Stewart). Unfortunately, Em only has eyes for Connell (Ryan Reynolds), the park’s cooler-than-cool handyman who happens to be married. These three characters play off each other well, and Eisenberg and Stewart have an easy chemistry onscreen together.

The hilarious Bill Hader, sporting a bad moustache, and Kristen Wiig (who I always remember from her hilarious turn as the snarky E! exec in Knocked Up) play Bobby and Paulette, the oddball couple who run Adventureland. They spend most days gluing googly eyes on carnival prizes in their trailer or sniffing un-refrigerated corndogs to determine if they’re fit for human consumption. Their scenes are without a doubt the funniest in the film – watching Hader lose it on a rowdy group of carnival-goers is priceless.

Otherwise though I felt the film was missing something — it never shone in any one area, as a flat-out comedy, a coming-of-age story, or even as a rom-com. It was modestly entertaining, but I was hoping that it would resonate with me on a deeper level especially since this is my generation, give or take a few years, being portrayed onscreen. Aside from the odd chuckle over a musical selection the film didn’t hit me as I expected it would. You sense that James, Em, and their bored, often stoned, counterparts are headed for bigger, more exciting things after the credits roll, and nothing particularly consequential happens to them over the course of the film. At the end of the day it’s a bit like that summer job — not without its amusing moments, but ultimately forgettable.

ALSO OPENING THIS WEEK: Fast & Furious, Fanboys, The Pool, Anvil! The Story of Anvil, Cloud 9

RECENT HIS TAKE/HER TAKE REVIEWS

Fanboys
Sunshine Cleaning
Duplicity
Polytechnique

Top image: Jesse Eisenberg and Kristen Stewart. Courtesy Maple Pictures.

Middle image: Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig. Courtesy Maple Pictures.