Word: adventureland
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...took for the sole purpose of saving money for graduate school. He was a night watchman at a public beach, an assistant wedding videographer and a staffer at an amusement park, managing various carnival games. The last position served as the inspiration for the new coming-of-age comedy Adventureland, which opens April 3. It's about an intellectual, awkward young man named James (Jesse Eisenberg) who spends a summer in the '80s at a family-owned amusement park, falling in love with another employee, Em (Kristen Stewart), who herself is dealing with the stress surrounding the death...
...Adventureland's protagonist, James Brennan (Jesse Eisenberg), spending his first postcollegiate summer working at a shabby regional amusement park is, at least initially, an insult to his very being. It's the summer of 1987, and he's supposed to be having a proper European tour with his Beautiful People friends. Instead he's stuck in Pittsburgh, Pa., because his alcoholic father (Jack Gilpin) is having employment issues and, as his almost gleefully unsympathetic mother (Wendy Malick) explains it, they can no longer help fund his trip. Or graduate school. (See the top 10 movie performances...
...their soul grandfather Woody Allen, possesses that ineffable something that makes it possible for him to be both a believable romantic lead and a bleater. He bleats his way through several unsuccessful job interviews. When he finally lands a job from the odd but endearing couple that runs Adventureland (Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig), he has the temerity to bleat about his assignment. He'd prefer Adventureland's slightly more glamorous Rides division, which he believes himself more suited for than Games. They shoot him down, with kindly conviction: "Oh no, you're Games." (See the top 10 movie bromances...
...rest of the Adventureland gang is good company as well. There's gangly, pimply, well-read Joel (Martin Starr), who offers James proof that there's intelligent life outside the Ivies. Lisa P (Margarita Levieva) is the essence of a mid-'80s goddess, all lip gloss, tight high-waisted pants and fluffy hair. An older, married handyman named Connell (Ryan Reynolds) flirts with every female employee, including the smart, sullen one James likes, Em (Twilight's Kristen Stewart, whose grins are seldom but feel like sunshine in an Alaskan winter). Connell is James' polar opposite, a heel who relishes being...
...With Superbad and Daytrippers, Mottola worked within the confines of a single day to great effect. Adventureland presents the bigger narrative challenge. He wants us to feel the sticky heat of summer days and the humming thrill of the nights, but he's required to move things along, plotwise. To this end, he's made poor James a virgin who is eager to be otherwise, allowing romance to lend shape to the summer. Will he find love with Em? Or the practically mythical Lisa P? (The fact that she is not Lisa, not Lisa Peters, but Lisa P, is perhaps...