Two years ago Greg Mottola got his big break by directing Superbad. A film that many people fell in love with. A film that can be watched over and over and only become funnier. Believe me, I know, and so does my father. At my house, Superbad is probably played at least once a month, if not once a week, usually in the depths of the night. It is easy for me to feel a strong connection with the characters; it is an accurate representation of my generation and what it’s like to be a senior in high school these days. However, I don’t feel that it is necessary to be young in order to find the film humorous. Mottola does this exact thing with his new film Adventureland. 

Set in 1987, Brennan has just graduated from college and his summer dreams are smashed when his father is de-promoted, and his fund to europe disappears. He is forced into getting a job in order to save for Columbia graduate school. The only position he can find is as game guider at the amusement park, Adventureland. The job becomes the smack-in-the-face Brennan needs in order to prepare himself for the real world.

I was surprised by actors used for the love interest. The chemistry seems a little far-fetched at the beginning. Once the characters personalities come through the relationship begins to work and make sense. Jesse Eisenberg does an incredible job that matches his amazing performance in The Squid and the Whale. With the release of Twlight and other films such as Speak, Fierce People, and Into the Wild, Kristen Stewart has been a rising star for some time now. Without Bill Hader, Ryan Reynolds and Martin Starr the film would never worked the way it does. I was constantly laughing. If I had remembered my inhaler, I would have been using it from laughing so hard.

Afterwards there was no Q & A which was pretty disappointing; Mottola was busy with something. I was waiting for the bathroom, and of course the line insanely long. So, I started a up a conversation with the ladies behind me. One was the exact age to have gone through the same experiences as the characters in the film, the other seemed to be about twenty years older, then me twenty years younger. We all agreed that it was hilarious, an obvious Mottola film, and cannot wait for it to go to theaters. At the same time, it is visibly more main stream then many of the films at Sundance, but that didn’t keep us from liking it.

Tags: adventureland, Aprille Brooker, greg mottola, jesse eisenberg, kristen stewart, sundance film festival, superbad

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 20th, 2009 at 5:19 pm and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.