Adventureland Review

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Adventureland- The ace in the pack Greg Mottola’s Adventureland (2009) belongs to a cycle of teen indie Rom-Coms that include Juno (Jason Reitman 2007), Youth in Revolt (Miguel Arteta 2009) and Mottola’s own Superbad (2007). These ‘Teen-Indies’ all contain biting wit, heavy doses of crude humour and the obligatory teen film criticism of adults. The problem with a cycle of films is that when the inevitable diminished forlorn imitators disappoint the audience the shine is rubbed off the originals. The producers of ‘Little Miss Sunshine’ (Jonathan Dayton/ Valerie Faris 2006) even had the cheek to cast Alan Arkin as another crazy loveable granddad two years later in Sunshine Clearing (2008)[1]. Adventureland will escape a possible future tarnishing as it differentiates itself from the other ‘Teen-Indies’ by virtue of its setting. Mottola’s film is set in 1987 in a run down theme park called ‘Adventureland’. James (Jesse Eisenberg) is forced due to his father’s demotion at work in to spending his entire summer working as a ‘carny’. A demeaning job that the intelligent James is willing to suffer through if it pays for his brighter future at Journalism school in New York City. Adventureland’s 80s setting is not used to mock the mad hair and crazy clothes. It is used because if you’re going to make the lost John Hughes film you must set it in the right decade. It may seem strange to compare Adventureland to John Hughes films as on the surface Adventureland appears to be a more thematically adult film. James falls in love with Em (Kristen Stewart) who is in the midst of an affair with the married Connell. Ryan Reynolds is brilliantly cast against type as the lying, manipulative, soulless Connell. Hughes’ most popular film The Breakfast Club (1984) can’t be dismissed as a film where moody teenagers realise they have more in common than they thought and hook up. There is

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