Monday, Apr. 06, 2009

'Adventureland' offers rewarding sense of reality

By Edward Robertson, atomictown.com

Surprise! A clown just kidnapped your girlfriend.

That's why nobody likes surprises. We spend all day thinking about cool things happening, so the only things that can surprise us are the bad things. Falling down a well, tripping into a cannon and then being shot out of that cannon into the mouth of a snake, dropping your pizza--you can't prepare for tragedies like that. All you can hope to do is come out of them without too much humiliation or mangling.

If life is a nonstop series of terrifying disappointments, that's why we need movies to remind us that hey, at least we're not being enslaved as batteries by squid-shaped robots. And sometimes, a movie pulls the ultimate surprise by being really, really good. I don't know where Adventureland was being advertised, but I know where it wasn't: the all-day sports network where I watch curling.

College grad Jesse Eisenberg has his summer all slotted out: head to Europe for some cultural exposure and moral degeneracy. But when his dad's demoted, the money dries up and so do Eisenberg's plans.

Stuck at home, expensive grad school looming, he takes a job at a local amusement park. The similarly overeducated Martin Starr, a coworker, makes Eisenberg's days bearable; Kristen Stewart makes them exciting.

Eisenberg and Stewart soon fall into a thing, a relationship that's complicated by the fact she's sleeping with married maintenance man Ryan Reynolds. The closer Eisenberg gets, the further she pulls away.

When Greg Mottola directed Superbad, he looked like a competent but unspectacular viceroy in the thriving Apatow Empire. Big deal: when someone hands you the keys to a space rocket, no one's surprised when you make it go fast. As the writer and director of Adventureland, Mottola's immediately become a true star, the kind of director you go see no matter how stupid or filled with Adam Sandler the trailer for his next movie may be.

It doesn't have the world's most original plot (wait, boy meets girl, boy loses girl? Slow down), but it's the details that prove the oldest stories can still be made fresh. Unfolding his film with the same leisurely, unstructured pace as a summer break, Mottola dodges cliches like the Neo of young love stories.

When his characters make big heartfelt speeches, there's no "You complete me." Instead, they're blundery and hurt, talking around their feelings because they don't know how to say them head-on. Trust me, this is how it works in real life. You think you're making the most glorious declaration since Thomas Jefferson broke up with England, but what really comes out is "I'm a big moron and you're right to be leaving me right now." This is why instead of talking, you should always try hitting.

Carefully underwritten to resemble real lie, their emotions show through despite their worst efforts. The same vibe comes off in their hang-out humor and a billion little character moments that add jack zero to the plot but would be sorely missed if cut. They'd drag like death if they weren't so funny and right.

All of which would be impossible without Adventureland's awesome cast. Eisenberg gets brainy and upstanding without falling into the "he's cute because he's awkward" thing everyone else who plays a geek trots out. As for Starr, he should be in every movie, and we should all paste pictures of him over our beds so he can watch us while we sleep. Bosses Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig liven up every scene they're in.

Mottola's evasive, disjointed style is going to throw a few people off; I can see it striking some as pointless, overlong. But it's not often a big commercial comedy feels like it was filmed right out of everyday life. Adventureland nails it, start to finish.

Grade: A-