Adventureland

Movie review from The Movie Snob

Adventureland (B). This is a coming-of-age story set in the halcyon year of 1987. A smart, sensitive guy named James Brennan (Jesse Eisenberg, The Village) has just graduated from college and is looking forward to spending the summer in Europe before going to journalism school at Columbia. Unfortunately it turns out that his family has just suffered a financial setback, which means he's got to stay in Pittsburgh and get a summer job. His only option, it soon develops, is to work the (crooked) games at a dumpy amusement park called Adventureland. His co-workers turn out to be an interesting crew that quickly distract him from the woeful turn his summer has taken -- the guitar-toting mechanic who may or may not have played a gig with Lou Reed, the melancholy philosopher who smokes a pipe and loves Gogol, the voluptuous Lisa P., and of course the girl he falls for, the sad and wounded Emily (Kristen Stewart, Twilight). It's a pretty good movie. And I couldn't help but notice a certain similarity to my own life -- after I graduated from college in 1990, I spent the summer living at home and sacking groceries at a Kroger before heading off to law school. It wasn't quite as zany as an amusement park, but I did get to dress up as a gorilla for about a week during "Zoo Days." And I met a cute checker that I dated for a while afterwards. So this movie really kind of spoke to me.