ADVENTURELAND, NOT YOUR AVERAGE TEEN SEX ROMP

By Cody McGowan

Staff Writer

Sometimes I feel as though I can’t throw a rock without hitting a teen comedy. An endless stream of hormonally-charged cinema constantly bombards the American public.

So it is pleasant to see a movie once in a while that rises above the empty-headed redundancy of the norm. “Adventureland,” Greg Mottola’s love letter to the freedom of youth on the verge of adulthood, represents a different kind of movie. It’s not a teen comedy, but rather a young adult comedy; one that captures an adolescent wistfulness with a maturity and poignancy that is not easily found in your average teen sex romp.

Centering on James Brennan (Jesse Eisenberg), a recent college graduate looking for a summer job to help pay his way in graduate school, “Adventureland” tells the story of one summer’s effect on the lives of the employees of the titular location. Brennan makes new friends and falls in love, while at the same time coming to terms with getting older and taking responsibility for his life. Kristen Stewart, of Twilight fame, stars opposite Eisenberg as love-interest Em Lewin. As the summer progresses, Brennan and Lewin’s romance grows, and as they get closer potentially damaging secrets are revealed about Lewin’s past, and present.

“Adventureland” is, very simply put, Cameron Crowe’s “Say Anything…” for the post-“Napoleon Dynamite” set. It’s surprisingly sincere, despite its occasional forays into a modernist detachment. This serves as the weakest part of “Adventureland,” and more than once threatens to undermine an otherwise earnest and heartfelt movie. In fact, it’s so pervasive in the first twenty or so minutes that I almost lost interest completely. However, once the plot gets going it becomes quite obvious that this is a movie worth watching.

One of the more interesting traits of the movie is the relative lack of melodrama. It’s true that for all of its genuine sincerity “Adventureland” can be sappier than a Bob Seger song, but every character is well rounded and very human. Problems are addressed, but not all are resolved. There is enough reality to this picture to give it the weight of true honesty. Not every beginning has an end and not every end is happily ever after.

It’s this kind of open-endedness that saves the movie from being just another run of the mill coming of age flick.

There is an unwritten rule in American society that says college is the time to decide who you want to be for the rest of your life. “Adventureland” is a movie for those who have not yet decided who they are, and what defines them. It’s a movie for the people who have not yet caught up with life, who take on the world at their own pace, whether they chose to or not. It’s for the romantics who believe that you can be whatever you want to be when you grow up but who aren’t ready to grow up yet.