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Maluquiro has seen ADVENTURELAND at Sundance!
Hey folks, Harry here with one of the more anticipated debuts from Sundance... at least for me, I love SUPERBAD and I'm very interested to see what Greg Mottola is as a personal director of his own material. Is he as rip-roaring funny? Is he emotionally bare and real? Or something entirely different? ADVENTURELAND has been screened and here's the first results...
Hey Guys,
Greg Mottola kind of came out of nowhere and kicked my butt with "Superbad." Say what you will about the script but Mottola added a few inspired touches of his own that elevated lewd fraternity into something a little more. Then, I noticed his name under the director's credit on a few episodes of Arrested Development and I was even more impressed.
With "Adventureland" Mottola is directing his own script (that he'd been working on since before "Superbad") and the result is something unexpected and special.
The film does touch some bases of the teen comedy formula. James, the main character is the sensitive virginal type who is unsure of himself around the opposite sex and "reads poetry for fun." Thankfully though, this movie isn't about him hatching some hairbrained scheme to finally lose the "scarlet v." Instead, it's about how he has to get a summer job at Adventureland, a junky theme park, so he can save up enough money to pay his rent when he moves to New York for grad school. His primary concern isn't about getting laid, it's more surviving the summer with his dignity intact while his intellectual college friends spend the summer in Europe.
There at Adventureland James meets Em, the edgy mysterious girl that is a prerequisite in most adolescent coming of age films. Em is a bright girl from a well-off family but wears worn band shirts and works at Adventureland to annoy her dad and step-mom. James quickly becomes infatuated with her. She is drawn to him as well, but won't let herself get too close The characterization of Em is something that sets "Adventureland" apart from films like "Superbad" and "Sex Drive." Em isn't an object of lust, and she isn't a Manic Pixie Dream Girl that teaches James how to live and love life. There is a sadness to her, and as more is revealed about her family and relationships the more complex she becomes as a character.
Ryan Reynolds is perfectly cast as a sort-of likeable prick who brags about jamming with Lou Reed but can't further his music career because he is trapped in a loveless marriage. Martin Starr is great as the nerdy guy who is maybe a litlle too smart for his own good. Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig play the owners of the park. They are the most conspicuous of the cast, and their performances constantly border on cartoonish exagerration - especially in comparison with the more natural performances of Jesse Eisenberg and Kristen Wiig. Luckily, Hader, Wiig and Mottola are all deft and talented anough to balance the ridiculousness with the pathos. They keep it believable by keeping the humor based in the script and the situations the characters are in instead of rolling the camera and letting Hader say whatever wacky improvisations come into his head.
In one scene Martin Starr compares another characer's genetalia to the platonic ideal. I think that's what's going on with the two main characters. They both see the other as something perfect and then never feel worthy of the others love. They both need to make mistakes in order to learn how to love someone for who they really are, not for how you wish they are.
Just so you don't think this is a serious touchy-feely movie I'm happy to report to you that there are not one but two erections at inopportune times, plenty of vomiting, multiple punches to the balls, a bald lady getting her wig ripped off, one corndog to the face, and Bill Hader in a ridiculous mustache.
Something for everyone.
Thanks!
Maluquiro.
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+ Expand All
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I'm not really a fan of the Apatow family of films but Superbad was fun. I'm actually looking forward to Adventureland and I Love You Man now.
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I liked Superbad, so who knows.
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makes this a must see. Does Ryan Reynolds ever play anything but a lovable prick??
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Makes me want to head over to Route 110 and hop on the Gravitron. I can't believe the actual Adventureland is still around.
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Love the look of this, and Ryan Reynolds just needs THAT script to really propel him forward - I think his timing is fantastic.
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If there WAS an actual Adventureland - this ain't it. This was shot at Kennywood Park in Pittsburgh, PA. I grew up going to this park every summer and now I've moved away and miss it terribly. I'm gonna see this just for the park! Hader and Wiig are just a bonus.
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Kristen Stewart is the actress playing Em. I've been impressed by that young actress since she held her own, and then some, alongside Jodie Foster in Panic Room.
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Dibs!
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You can't call 'dibs' on something that's never going to happen, ever.
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...but it sure smells good!
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Bill Hader's occassionally pretty funny...but personally, I find Kristen Wiig unwatchable. A bunch of her characters are the same (mousy agitated woman who repeats herself constantly while speaking a thousand miles a minute). Pretty tedious....but Abby Elliott...tasty AND funny.
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kaneda!
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Nah...
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I feel like he was slipping away there at the end.
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Who cares?
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this movie looks funny but i would like to who or why i should care?
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I shall pass on this waste of time.
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and I'll wear a wig while doing it too!
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Reviewer also forgot to mention it's set in 1987. So we get all of the fun overused 80's references.
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Greg Mottola did not come out of nowhere. He wrote and directed this film over a decade ago and it is wonderful. If you haven't done so, seek it out.
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and taken the name Mansqueto
A name with Bite!
A name with a Beloved History here at AICN
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I saw that in the theater and liked it when I saw it. It's a better film than Superbad.
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kristen stewart is great, and i should've mentioned her more. she really brought the complexities of her character to life.
drsauch - haha yeah i wrote this at like three in the morning at the end of a long but great day. i think i actually dozed off while writing the second to last paragraph, but i thought i pulled it together at the end.
fatty magee - the movie is set in the 80's but not in a "wedding singer" look how funny the 80's are type of way. the main characters could have existed in any decade, and as kristin stewart said at the q & a, "people are people no matter what year they are born." every once and a while you see reagan on t.v. or see people with funny haircuts, but they're never played as jokes. the most obtrusive 80's joke is that "Rock Me Amadeus" plays constantly over the park's p.a.
hauptman - i only became aware of "the daytrippers" pretty recently but it's now high on list of films to see. thanks for the recommendation.
i'm not a plant, just an enthusiastic and slightly mediocre reviewer.
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But for a movie set in the '80s, will we not see a plethora of bad hair and bad fashion? In a movie that takes place in an amusement park? (Lots and lots of mullets)
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...maluquiro, in your review: Adventureland, at least the one supposedly portrayed from the press reports I've read, IS already in New York (the Long Island suburb of Farmingdale--Motolla is from the region); so technically, the character would be saving money to move a forty minute drive and a couple county lines and burroughs away into NYC. Just figured I'd point it out as a Long Islander, is all.
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there is bad hair and fashion, but it's not used as a punchline. if you hate the 80's though i can see how that would be a problem.
orbots, in the q & a mottola said he actually worked in the real adventureland in long island, but didn't film the movie there, and the movie wasn't set in long island, if my memory serves me correct. -
Jan 20, 2009 1:14:33 PM CST
Ah, gotcha. The real Adventureland really is junky though.
by orbots commander
So Mottola BASED it on his memories from Long Island, not that it's set there. Gotcha. I drive past Adventureland about once a week, and I used to work for a short while for a Defense contractor near there. The real Adventureland is a small-ish theme park that was known for its roller coaster and its huge 80-s era video arcade game area. Of course after the advent of Sega and Sony PS in the late 80's and early 90's, the place went downhill. But Penn Station in Manhattan is literally a forty minute ride, shorter than an episode of BSG, on the Long Island Rail Road.
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yeah, the movie is set in pennsylvania.
mottola said that adventureland had a "used needles" feel to it, but they remodeled it and it is now much nicer.
i would also like to apologize for the embarrassing run-on sentence in my previous post. -
Jan 20, 2009 2:19:42 PM CST
This is at the top of my "wanna see that" list.
by the reluctant austinite
It looks more like an early Cameron Crowe film than a modern comedy. It's been awhile since good comdies also had dramtic centers that young people could identify with. We need more stuff like "The Breakfast Club."
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Ryan Reynolds is fast becoming my next "why the fuck does this guy keep getting jobs?" now that Dane Cook is mercifully off the radar. Really - the only other actors who had less screen charisma and personality are probably Josh Hartnett and Loren Dean. Reynolds is a stiff; he's generic-looking, all his movies tank - WHY does he keep getting leads? Is it because he doesn't demand a lot of money? Are directors impressed because he bagged Scarlett Johannsen? WHAT? I am at a loss to explain why he gets so much work.
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When Hollywood stops confining its hipsters to 'hipster movies' and starts putting them in other kinds of movies, like horror or scifi movies.That being said this is the first writeup of a hipster-movie that has actually sounded like something I'd want to see, and it is because of the description of the girl, I think.
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wasn't baghead a hipster type slasher movie? is mumblecore a hipster thing?
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