When I first saw Jesse Eisenberg in Roger Dodger (which is a
great movie, no matter what your pastor or gynecologist tells you), I
thought, “This guy is gonna be a star.”
I simultaneously thought that his career was over, because everyone
I think is going to make it big winds up getting supporting roles in
blaxploitation movies and then opening a car dealership in Boca.
But then he was in The Squid and the Whale (which is a
great movie, no matter what your Marxist guerilla squadron leader tells
you), and I thought, well, maybe he’ll make it. Which convinced me that
he was doomed to a life of bit parts on short-lived CW sitcoms.
But now I see that he has eight movies scheduled to come out in the
next year or so, meaning I can finally and assuredly state that by this
time in 2010, he’ll be completely overexposed and preparing to do a
series of Las Vegas lounge shows.
Because he’s great. He’s like a dramatic version of Michael Cera,
and with Adventureland (and The Education of Charlie
Banks, which, for some reason, is now in limited release after
spending two years on Fred Durst’s bathroom shelf next to a sticky
picture of Britney Spears exiting a car), he really gets to show off
his dramatic range, which goes from A all the way to those made-up
letters from Dr. Seuss’s On Beyond Zebra! (which is a great
book, no matter what Rush Limbaugh and his 75-year-old Hawaiian
dominatrix tell you).
Adventureland is directed and written by Greg Mottola, who
made Superbad, which was a decent if entirely formulaic film.
Superbad‘s biggest problem was that the female characters were
pretty much two-dimensional and acted mostly as door prizes for the
boys. Maybe that’s because Mottola was working with a Seth Rogen
script, and as lovable as Rogen is, he’s basically brain-damaged from
all the pot and masturbating to which he’s dedicated his life.
But Mottola, given the chance to write his own film, completely
trumps his earlier effort. Adventureland isn’t a comedy, per se;
it’s more of a coming-of-age film, though it has some funny moments.
But what it really captures is how the worst summer of your life is the
best summer of your life.
Eisenberg plays James Brennan, who, in 1987, is preparing to go to
Columbia’s journalism school when his WASP-y parents give him some bad
news: Apparently, his dad’s collar-starching and jaw-stiffening
business is on the skids, and they can’t afford to support young James
while he learns how to write media-friendly copy.
So James winds up taking a job at Adventureland, a sleazy amusement
park near his home in Pittsburgh. There, he meets and falls in love
with Em Lewin (Kristen Stewart). James, though, is a virgin, and Em is
receiving sexual experiences at the hands of handyman/lothario Mike
Connell (Ryan Reynolds). The plot might sound like a standard rip-off
of Invaders From Planet X mixed with elements Donald Rumsfeld’s
diaries, but it’s far more human than that combination would imply.
Eisenberg brings a painfully awkward humanity to the part, and he’s
more than matched by Stewart, who, it turns out, is a pretty good
actress when she’s not boinking a vampire. Even Reynolds, who’s
basically a cheesy sitcom actor, is perfect in the role, since his
character is a good-looking, glad-handing phony. The rest of the
supporting cast is mostly great, too, with high marks going to Martin
Starr as the nerdy literature major, and Margarita Levieva as “Lisa
P.,” the quintessential ’80s girl. Levieva does a great job of
capturing the ’80s-teen-film acting style and epitomizing what was
horrifying about that era, from purple eye shadow to the marriage of
techno and radio-friendly disco.
Which is another thing I really liked about Adventureland:
Most of the recent ’80s nostalgia films have soundtracks filled with
the Duran Duran/a-ha pop fodder of the day. But that was exactly the
music that defined “awful” for the legions of black-clad rockers who
made the DIY stuff that influenced ’90s emo and 2000s alterna.
Adventureland seems to recognize this, with the lovable outcast
characters listening to the great American punk-rock of the era while
the loudspeakers at the theme park incessantly blast mainstream
bubblegum.
So as James and Em pad around in Hüsker Dü T-shirts
playing Black Flag and Replacement mixes on their car cassette decks,
the world around them is squeezing shoulder pads on top of shoulder
pads and purple leggings under Flashdance T-shirts, and it’s like
watching Frodo and Sam trying to hold back the world-destroying powers
of Sauron. Which is to say, moving and charming—a redemptive,
promising moment for writer/director Mottola. The film has only one
major flaw: Mottola, perhaps still not free from the infantile
Apatow-ism of his earlier film, has a recurring joke about James
getting punched in the man-bits. Cockpunched, as the kids today
say.
Cockpunching is about as funny as vomiting, which is, no matter what
the Farrelly brothers say, not actually funny. So we could have done
without it. But overall, this is a quantum leap in maturity from
Superbad (which is an amusing but mediocre movie, no matter what
your right-wing talk-show hosts and anti-abortion terrorist friends
tell you), and with any luck, Mottola will continue to thread the fine
gap between sappy romance and stupid humor in his future projects,
bringing us more of this very human filmmaking.
This article appears in Apr 2-8, 2009.