Monday, May 4, 2009

Adventureland (2009) - by Rucksack



At first glimpse the trailer for Greg Mottola’s quirky Adventureland seems like a rehash of over saturated themes and motifs of this now successful indie genre, the 1980’s slacker Coming of Age story. Fortunately, I was intrigued to further inspect the film because of its crack production team (Bill Horberg, Sidney Kimmel, and particularly Ted Hope, a personal hero and the most audible barker of positivity and ahem, well, hope amidst an artistic climate whose meteorologists are reporting that the sky is falling) and because of Jesse Eisenberg who I’ve developed a new respect for after seeing him in the tragically unreleased The Living Wake.

While the movie is based on a simple story which we’ve all seen time and again, I found it to be genuine and worthwhile beyond the typical limits of cliche. The basic premise is this: James is forced to take a job at a low end amusement park after his father gets demoted and can no longer afford to send him to Europe for his college graduation present. I was pleased that the movie shies away from the temptation to make overtures about the virtues of the lower class. I feared that profound life lessons would come out of a black janitor, about ultimate enlightenment and the emptiness of possessions blah blah blah - but to my delight, all of the character development is beautifully interpersonal and the characters are competent enough human beings to learn from their mistakes without contrived plot points or even a protracted musical montage.

The music, however, is a smidge low budget for my taste. I sympathize with an indie trying to pay for the astronomical costs of licensing fees – especially of music from over 20 years ago – but a few of the cues are reused three or four times and I personally became emotionally numb to the effect. Even though the songs are often placed diagetically within the movie as opposed to being “soundtrack” cues, hearing Lou Reed’s “Pale Blue Eyes” four times in one movie is a little too much.

On the other hand, Pale Blue Eyes was first released in 1969 and this movie takes place in 1987. It’s clear that Mottola has a knack for finding warmth and charm in utilizing period settings without using it as a crutch. Both Superbad and Adventureland are movies that could have taken place at any time in history (and most cost effectively today) but are both rooted in decades past with deft subtlety. It’s all too easy to simply make fun of the culture sins that were committed in the past. Instead, Mottola embraces the wardrobe as a foregone conclusion and incorporates an all encompassing design that is conscious of the fact that even the eighties were built on the seventies and sixties and all of history before it.

The casting of the movie is spot on from Ryan Reynolds to Bill Hader with the one glaring exception being the female lead, Kristen Stewart (Twilight, On the Road). I am continually appalled that this girl keeps landing big roles. Sure her father is a Producer (for the bedazzling talent of Ryan Seacrest) and of course she’s been acting in Hollywood since she was ten but someone in the executive branch of this business needs to wake up and smell the ugly. Forget that she has a total of four different affectations that signal her “emotions” and sum up her entire talent – first and foremost, she’s ugly! Let’s please get someone who at least has one or the other.

Fortunately, Eisenberg (who’s replaced Michael Cera as Mottola’s sensitive and nervous yet charming and capable hero) and a superb cast of support carry the show despite Stewarts perpetual blemish on the world of cinema. I was thrilled to see Martin Starr show up in the adult version of the role he played in Freaks and Geeks.

All in all, this movie has got a winning spirit. I’ll be anxious to see what Mottola does next.


No comments:

Post a Comment