Step Right Up | Martin Starr and Jesse Eisenberg spend a summer handing out stuffed bananas and cleaning up vomit in Adventureland.
Written and directed by Greg Mottola. Starring Jesse Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart, Martin Starr, Bill Hader, Kristen Wiig, Ryan Reynolds. Opens Fri, Apr 3.
*****
No disrespect to Greg Mottola’s last directorial project, 2007’s super-caffeinated Superbad, but it’s a hollow shell compared to his utterly sublime follow-up, Adventureland. The new film (which Mottola also wrote) is so good, in fact — so touching, hilarious, and expertly put together — that all of mainstream Hollywood comedy is on genre-wide notice: the bar has just been raised. Letting a group of funny people riff on a lukewarm script while the cameras roll is no longer going to cut it. I’m looking at you, I Love You, Man.
At first sight of this third-rate amusement park in Pittsburgh in 1987, however, there isn’t much joy on display — and certainly no adventure. Then again, you wouldn’t want to draw too much attention to what Adventureland does have: crudely rigged carnival games, boxes of expired corndogs, and a staff of underachieving, disillusioned twentysomethings who maintain their thousand-mile stares even while helping customers use the rickety Skee-Ball machine. Plus, the couple that owns the park (Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig) keeps “Rock Me Amadeus” playing over the loudspeaker ad nauseam.
So when his family can no longer afford to help pay for his trip to Europe, recent liberal arts grad James (Jesse Eisenberg) is forced to take a summer job at the park to make up the difference. But his shame at having to clean up puke all day quickly fades away as he recognizes some kindred spirits amidst the landscape of kitsch: there’s his fellow games operator Joel (Martin Starr), a self-conscious pipe smoker whose real passion is Russian literature and Slavic languages; and especially Em (Twilight’s Kristen Stewart), an NYU undergrad who also happens to be a pale, deadpanning knockout.
Before long, James and Em begin a fumbling romance that struggles at every turn to hit its stride. Em can’t seem to break off her ongoing secret affair with the park’s mechanic (Ryan Reynolds), a married man. For his part, James is loath to admit he’s never had sex, and makes up for it by intellectualizing his virginity and reading Henry Miller. Both of them are shaken by their parents’ respective dysfunctional relationships. Then there’s Lisa P (Margarita Levieva), Adventureland’s resident hot girl, who takes an interest of her own in James as well as his easy access to pot.
It’s been 10 years since the adored but short-lived sitcom Freaks and Geeks was cancelled, and since then its reputation and influence have grown at an exponential rate. Nearly every coming-of-age story these days seems to crib one angle or another from it, but Adventureland is the first project that truly holds its own against that show’s complex layers of heartache and note-perfect period details. It’s no surprise to hear that Mottola worked at the real-life Adventureland in the summer of 1987 — he nails all of it.
The cast is so funny and well-chosen that it seems like they’ve been working together for years. In particular, Eisenberg (best known from his role as the eldest son in The Squid and the Whale) plays this combination of sweetness and hurt confusion so well it’s as if he owns the patent, and Stewart’s Em, beneath her neuroses, is lovable as hell. SNL cast members Hader and Wiig give excellent smaller performances, and Reynolds hits just the right mix of sleazeball and guru when he gives James dating advice on one hand and seduces Em on the other.
Then there’s Starr, the only actor here who actually comes from Freaks and Geeks, and who steals quite a bit of the show — in one superb scene, he presents his crush with a copy of The Overcoat and happily tells her that Gogol burned his last manuscript and starved himself to death. Starr’s delivery is so sincere and unassuming that, just for a second, it sounds like the most romantic thing you’ve ever heard.
It can get irritating when films set in the present day load their soundtracks with cutting-edge artists — how many times has Vampire Weekend made an unnecessary appearance in the last 12 months? — but for a film like this, set lovingly in 1987, those of-the-moment songs give it yet another ring of truth. Adventureland is loaded to the brim with choice selections from The Replacements, Big Star, and Hüsker Dü — not to mention tons and tons of Lou Reed. When Animotion’s “Obsession” comes on at a nightclub, everyone runs, shrieking, to the dancefloor. The characters constantly talk about music, and every stereo is in use at all times; it will make you nostalgic for a time (if indeed there ever was one) when “Pale Blue Eyes” was on your local bar’s jukebox.
Exuberant, meek, hopeless, exhilarating, depressing, funny, full of ennui and romantic sparks and vomit — this is life as a teenager, and this is Adventureland.
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