I am a variation on a perpetual motion machine. Once put in motion it seems I can't be stopped; but once stopped, it's hard to get me moving again. As a result, it's been a month since my last post. A corollary principle is that the longer I go without a post the more pressure I feel to write something profound, which becomes a paralyzing force. I will break the cycle with a very nonprofound movie recommendation.
Based on the ads for "Adventureland," I thought it was another movie aimed at the dumb guy set. (Not to be judgmental or anything.) For one thing, the ads say "from the director of 'Superbad' . . . ." (I didn't see "Superbad," so I don't mean to cast aspersions blindly, but it does conjure up an image.) They didn't say "from the writer and director of "The Daytrippers," which would have caught the attention of the smaller, less young demographic that were fans of that 1996 Hope Davis/Liev Schreiber/Anne Meira/Stanley Tucci/Parker Posey movie by Greg Mottola. I can't blame their marketing choice, but I'm just glad I checked the reviews on metacritic, which gave it a 76, before rejecting it out of hand.
It's a coming-of-age story set in the summer job world of an amusement park near Pittsburgh. (It was filmed at Kennywood, where I went my own self as a youth.) It has a sweet, realistic, "Freaks and Geeks" sort of feeling to it. And yes, that's Martin Starr, aka Bill from F&G, above on the right. On the left is the movie's star, Jesse Eisenberg, who played a similar nerdy, likable character in "The Squid and the Whale." In fact, "Adventureland" is what you might get if you crossed "The Squid and the Whale" with "Sixteen Candles" (though "Adventureland's" family dysfunctionality is entertaining, not spirit-crushing). The movie is set in 1987 -- seven years after F&G -- and part of the fun lies in the 1987 details, from Lisa P's Madonna-inspired look, to James's childhood friend's Loverboy headband, to "Rock Me Amadeus." It seemed strange to watch 22-year-olds going through life without cell phones or iPods. When James made a call from a pay phone I wondered whether the teenagers in the audience recognized the sound of the coins dropping. My one criticism was that I thought the female love interest, played by Kristen Stewart, seemed like many stock male love interests in these kinds of movies: attractive, mysterious, and brooding, and if you stop to think about it you wonder what he sees in her. But really, who needs to think about it that much?
I am in a similar (longer, deeper) blog paralysis, so I hear you! Glad to see you back!
Posted by: Jabber | April 20, 2009 at 10:34 AM