Love is like a roller coaster

Adventureland
Review by Nathan Weinbender

Greg Motolla, who directed “Superbad,” is responsible for the new movie “Adventureland,” and having seen his previous film, which was a crass (but sweet) laff-a-minute teen comedy, I’m surprised by the soft-spoken wistfulness of this one.

The characters in “Superbad,” if you’ll recall, were high school seniors who were apprehensive about becoming grown-ups. The heroes of “Adventureland” aren’t much different: They’re just out of college, the world has made them cynical and they’re still waiting for that defining moment where they will march over into adulthood. That insecurity seemed charming in “Superbad;” now it just seems sort of pathetic.

Jesse Eisenberg (from “The Squid and the Whale”) plays James Brennan, who returns home after college still a virgin, heartbroken from a recent break-up and unsure of his future. His parents urge him to get a summer job, hoping he’ll make enough money to move to New York and become a journalist, and he ends up running the game booths at the local Adventureland theme park.

Everyone who works there either hates their job or is too stoned to care. The park is populated by familiar supporting characters: Joel, the nerdy best friend (Martin Starr), who informs us that all carnival games are rigged; Connell (Ryan Reynolds), the thirty-year-old mechanic who may or may not have once jammed with Lou Reed; and Bobby and Paulette (“SNL” cast members Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig), a weird married couple who manage the park.

And then there’s Em (Kristen Stewart), who is smart and pretty and obviously wounded. James is smitten, maybe because she’s really wounded and his wounds are merely superficial. Although Em likes him back, she’s still coping with the death of her mother, her father’s recent marriage and her self-destructive affair with the married Connell.

The cast here is great; I really can’t imagine anyone else playing these parts. Eisenberg, who looks like he could be Michael Cera’s older brother, really captures the egotism and neuroticism of a 24-year-old whose life would be perfect if he could just get out of this town. Starr is perfect as the philosophizing, pipe-smoking dweeb who, as a sign of affection, gives a girl a book by Gogol (“He died of self-inflicted starvation,” he explains). And Hader and Wiig get the film’s biggest laughs as the husband and wife who are oblivious to everything going on around them.

But it’s Kristen Stewart, now a superstar after appearing in “Twilight,” who is most impressive. For the critics who have regarded the lack of female perspective in modern comedies, here is a girl who is written to be more than the sum of her parts. Stewart is honest and headstrong and vulnerable all at the same time; she’s one of those natural performers who can say or do anything on-screen and we believe it. She’s got quite a career ahead of her, and not one that just involves chaste vampires.

“Adventureland” is set in 1987, but the angst it expresses is universal. No, it doesn’t explore any new territory, but it is a smart film, funny and nostalgic and sweet, where real life begins and ends when the summer does. That the characters are freed from the rigidity of sitcom plots and gross-out comedy routines and are allowed to live and breathe in the real world is one of the film’s many strengths.

Directed and written by Greg Mottola. Starring Jesse Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart, Martin Starr, Ryan Reynolds, Margarita Levieva, Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig. R; 107m.