Adventureland


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The UK's Leading fantasy & horror film festival.

The Empire Cinema, Leicester Square, London 27th to 31st August 2009

It's so good it's scary - The Guardian

The premiere event of the year for horror fans - Time Out

Directed by Greg Mottola. Starring Jesse Eisenberg, Ryan Reynolds, Kristen Stewart, Martin Starr, Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig. Comedy, USA, 110 min. Web Site.

Every so often a performance pops up serving notice one should really take more notice of the great things that actor is bound to do in the future.

Against all the odds I enjoyed the vampire soap opera TWILIGHT mainly because headliner Kristen Stewart made heroine Bella Swan far more believable than the poorly written role had any right to allude to. I can’t say I paid too much attention to her parts in JUMPER or THE MESSENGERS, but in director Greg Mottola’s autobiographical pet project ADVENTURELAND Stewart taps into a subtle emotional reservoir that adds a remarkable nuanced sadness to the 1987 set coming-of-age saga. Stewart is now top of my must-see list because of her exceptional work in this wistfully enjoyable comedy drama. She plays cool, edgy Em, the girl brainy college graduate James (Jesse Eisenberg) strikes up a tentative relationship with when forced to take a summer job at a rundown local amusement park, Adventureland. She doesn't tell him that she's secretly having an affair with the park's married mechanic Mike (Ryan Reynolds). But it’s clear they are destined to be together due to their shared love of 80s rock music and similar romantic insecurities. Doing nothing the thousand other first-love/finding-one’s-place-in-the-world teen movies haven’t done before, what’s so good about Mottola’s valentine to 80s fads, fashions and mindset is the believable engagement in all the characters’ attitudes and actions and the tenderness with which they are put across. True, the theme park setting is a bit of an obvious place for universal truths to ride emotional rollercoasters, get knocked about by dodgems and Waltzer off into the distance. Yet Mottola’s sure-hand, insight and keenness to make every minor character count (Martin Starr brilliant as a depressive park veteran and Russian Literature scholar whose morning-after make-out gift to a big-haired slut is a Gogol paperback) gives ADVENTURELAND its bittersweet heart. Coming off helming the Judd Apatow-produced smash SUPERBAD, Mottola’s far superior latest should not be mistaken for another stupid growing pains comedy of that ilk.

While you may get sick as the Adventureland staff hearing Falco’s ‘Rock Me Amadeus' for the umpteenth time, that certainly won’t be the case with the refreshingly sharp and amusing dialogue. Or the wonderful Kristen Stewart. This Summer Loving had me another blast!

Alan Jones

ADVENTURELAND - 2009

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