Hidden Gems: Adventureland

By Kyle Lee

September 21, 2016

I feel like playing a game.

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Another polarizing actor, Kristen Stewart, is here so beautifully fascinating and charming that you can't help but fall in love with her at least a little bit. She brings a certain delicate intelligence to her character that I'm not sure many actresses her age could pull off. She’s not quite the idealized manic pixie dream girl that many love interests are in these types of movies. She’s a young woman who has been hurt, made mistakes, but is a good person, funny, and someone who stands up for and protects the people she cares about. It’s not at all hard to see why James falls for her.

In fact, each supporting performance is really spot on, with Martin Starr in particular being worthy of mention as James' fellow game booth worker Joel. He sees himself and the world around him with a clarity that none of the other characters possess, giving James the kind of advice that he needs, rather than the kind he's been taking from Connell. And Ryan Reynolds as Connell is the type of work he needs to do more often as an actor. Reynolds is usually best in small doses, I find, and so his scene stealing turn here is perfect and probably the best work of his career. Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig are the only really unrealistic supporting characters, but both are so funny and work so well together that I don’t really care.




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Director Greg Mottola's previous movie, Superbad, was one of the most realistic depictions of teenage mindset, life, and emotions that I've ever seen (barring the McLovin storyline, which while hilarious was also that movie’s equivalent of Hader and Wiig). At the time, I gave most of the credit for that to writers Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, and stars Jonah Hill and Michael Cera. Adventureland makes me think that maybe a lot of that credit deserves to go to Mottola. He takes on writing duties this time, telling a semi-autobiographical story that he just flat out nails as director. The delicate narrative telling of this movie is really a wonder to behold. It’s episodic, but somehow Mottola makes it feel cohesive, as the emotions and even the comedy are all part of the whole tapestry of James and his summer at Adventureland.

Of course it’s a coming-of-age movie, but I still think it's a hard one to classify because everything in it works so well that it rises above those genre clichés. So yes it has comedy, drama, romance, awkwardness, friendship, punches to the crotch, and maybe a chase scene or two. But sometimes you watch a movie so good that you just sit in your seat and hope it knows how amazing it could be if it doesn't screw it up in the end. Adventureland is that kind of movie, and it never falters once.


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