I'm not the type of person to walk out of a movie - in fact, I've never done it - but Adventureland made it a challenge to stay in the theater in a way that few films do.
Let me preface this by saying that I hadn't seen any previews or heard much about Adventureland, so I wasn't expecting a Superbad-esquire romp like many other reviewers apparently did. I didn't know whether I was going for a comedy, a drama, a coming-of-age flick, or what. I had an open mind, willing to accept whatever I saw, and yet I was incredibly disappointed and confused by the end of it.
Adventureland suffers from having an incredibly cliché plot, the standard awkward boy meets troubled girl fare that we've all seen hundreds of times before. From early on in the movie, I was able to figure out exactly where it was going, and at no point was I thrown for a loop. Everything proceeds according to genre conventions. There is nothing new or unexpected here. Additionally, there is a strange fatalistic tone that pervades the movie that manages to be overly serious and depressing without being at all deep.
None of the main characters are in any way likable or believable. A large portion of the plot revolves around the difficulty that Jesse Eisenberg's character (James) has expressing his affection for Kristen Stewart's character (Em) and attempting to make the relationship work. I guess this was supposed to be a meaningful story about two misunderstood college kids trying to reach out to each other and looking for love in all the wrong place, blah blah blah. Instead, James comes off as a boring, awkward guy who becomes infatuated with the first girl who gives him any attention; Em never rises above our first impression of her as a cookie-cutter troubled teen who keeps James around for his good weed connection. Because of this, I couldn't bring myself to care about what happened to either of them.
Too much of this movie seems to be an attempt by the forty-something director Greg Mottola to prove that he can still seem cool to today's youth. The characters are constantly smoking weed (okay, we get it, they're cool, introspective kids!) and dropping stereotypical lines to bring attention to it: "This is some GREAT WEED James" or "Man I am SO HIGH." For some reason this is set in the 1980s, I guess for some sort of faux-cool retro feeling, or maybe just so people can namedrop Lou Reed every ten seconds. Unfortunately, the setting was terribly executed: half of the characters are wearing trendy American Apparel fashion, and Yo La Tengo's recognizably modern score is jarring when juxtaposed with famous 80's tunes.
Overall, Adventureland fails on almost every level. The comedy? Terrible. The drama? Played out. The characters? Boring. The acting? Meh. The setting? Poorly executed. Avoid this movie, I don't know how it is getting such good reviews.
Let me preface this by saying that I hadn't seen any previews or heard much about Adventureland, so I wasn't expecting a Superbad-esquire romp like many other reviewers apparently did. I didn't know whether I was going for a comedy, a drama, a coming-of-age flick, or what. I had an open mind, willing to accept whatever I saw, and yet I was incredibly disappointed and confused by the end of it.
Adventureland suffers from having an incredibly cliché plot, the standard awkward boy meets troubled girl fare that we've all seen hundreds of times before. From early on in the movie, I was able to figure out exactly where it was going, and at no point was I thrown for a loop. Everything proceeds according to genre conventions. There is nothing new or unexpected here. Additionally, there is a strange fatalistic tone that pervades the movie that manages to be overly serious and depressing without being at all deep.
None of the main characters are in any way likable or believable. A large portion of the plot revolves around the difficulty that Jesse Eisenberg's character (James) has expressing his affection for Kristen Stewart's character (Em) and attempting to make the relationship work. I guess this was supposed to be a meaningful story about two misunderstood college kids trying to reach out to each other and looking for love in all the wrong place, blah blah blah. Instead, James comes off as a boring, awkward guy who becomes infatuated with the first girl who gives him any attention; Em never rises above our first impression of her as a cookie-cutter troubled teen who keeps James around for his good weed connection. Because of this, I couldn't bring myself to care about what happened to either of them.
Too much of this movie seems to be an attempt by the forty-something director Greg Mottola to prove that he can still seem cool to today's youth. The characters are constantly smoking weed (okay, we get it, they're cool, introspective kids!) and dropping stereotypical lines to bring attention to it: "This is some GREAT WEED James" or "Man I am SO HIGH." For some reason this is set in the 1980s, I guess for some sort of faux-cool retro feeling, or maybe just so people can namedrop Lou Reed every ten seconds. Unfortunately, the setting was terribly executed: half of the characters are wearing trendy American Apparel fashion, and Yo La Tengo's recognizably modern score is jarring when juxtaposed with famous 80's tunes.
Overall, Adventureland fails on almost every level. The comedy? Terrible. The drama? Played out. The characters? Boring. The acting? Meh. The setting? Poorly executed. Avoid this movie, I don't know how it is getting such good reviews.
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