Word: superbad
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Before Greg Mottola signed on to direct the hit comedy Superbad in 2007, he had already completed a script about the summer jobs he worked in Long Island - gigs he 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...
...This whole movie is really about the small things - the tone's a little more muted than what we saw in Superbad. I had always thought my fantasy career would be making indie films, and doing my own thing. But then Superbad came along and it totally changed everything. It was so hilarious and smart and extreme; you could probably do a psychoanalysis term paper on the male sexual psyche going on there. And the best thing about that movie is that these are the things that teenagers think about. Some of those who were raised a little better might...
...Eisenberg, like Superbad's Michael Cera and 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...
...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...
...After Knocked Up (a purportedly heterosexual romance where the closest connection is between Rogen and Rudd) and Superbad (where the two high-school chums end up together in a sleeping bag) and another Apatow-produced comedy, I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry (where two straight firefighters solder their emotional bond by getting married), the bromance may have reached its logical conclusion: guys going on man-dates. Without ever being gay, of course. The love in I Love You, Man is agape, not eros - but still a higher form of communion, the film says, than those tired old guy-gal relationships...