For those in the twilight of their teen years or the outset of their 20s, summer usually means crappy jobs, long days spent ruminating about some ill-defined vision of the future, and nights full of brown liquid in red Solo cups. Whether it’s in the immediate aftermath of a high school or college graduation — or some time in between — the stretch from June to August tends to present itself as both an exploratory and transitional time in the lives of aimless young people, one that traditionally comes with more than its fair share of joyous highs and disillusioned lows. For me, no film has better captured that time on screen, and made me more nostalgic for my own youthful summers, thanGreg Mottola’s 2009 comedy,Adventureland— and no, it’s not just because I was a 13-year-old with a crush onKristen Stewartwhen it was released.
Centered on the trials and tribulations of a group of young amusement park employees over the course of the summer of 1987 in Pittsburgh, Mottola’s film has the power to resonate with anyone who came of age in any time or place because, like most great art, it finds universality in the specific. As the film accurately reflects what it is like to feel stuck at a pivotal point in your life, specifically through Stewart andJesseEisenberg’s characters and the relationship they form,the audience can’t help but fondly think back on their own disenchanted summer “glory days.”
‘Adventureland’ Perfectly Captures the Wandering Summers After College
Adventurelandstars Eisenberg as James, a thoughtful and literary hopeless romantic whosepost-college plansto vacation in Europe before attending graduate school at Columbia are upended when his parents inform him that a setback at his father’s job has left them unable to help fund the trip. Forced to move back home for the summer, he quickly looks for any stopgap job that will allow him to save a little money forNew York Cityrent in the fall.He ends up begrudgingly taking up employment at the titular local amusement parkafter he discovers his Renaissance Studies degree isn’t exactly useful for finding a part-time gig in his small hometown. There, he finds the other lost souls he’ll be spending his wayward summer days with.
Among others, the park is home to Joel (Martin Starr), a self-described pragmatic nihilist and Russian Literature major who bonds with James over their shared hatred of their workplace; Connell (Ryan Reynolds), the park’s thirty-something maintenance man whose “local legend” status — built on apocryphal stories of him once jamming with Lou Reed — casts him in a similar light as the grown adult who regales you with tales of his high-school football career while still donning his letterman jacket; Frigo (Matt Bush), your typical crude and immature male between the ages of 18-22 who used to be James' best friend, “until I turned four,” he notes; Lisa P (Margarita Levieva), the object of every man in the park’s affection; and Em (Stewart),an empathetic and resilient NYU student dealing with a troubled home life in the wake of her mom passing away and her father remarrying.
‘Adventureland’ Is a Love Letter to Small-town Summers
In watching James become acclimated to this new, temporaryfound family, you might reminisce about some of the people who may have played a major role for a short period of time in their own lives. Seemingly, Mottola wanted to explore the idea that many of the most important relationships you have in life are with the people you count the days with while waiting to escape the mundanely unfortunate, even if those relationships don’t last beyond the shared misery. For James, Em, Joel, and so many real-life young people before and after them, the ultimate goal is getting out of their dull and restrictive hometown. The film doesn’t play as a critique ofsmall, suburban life, though. On the contrary,it’s a celebration of the ordinary people who comprise those towns.
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While it’s set in Pittsburgh,Adventurelandis based on a theme park of the same name in Farmingdale, New York, near Mottola’s hometown on Long Island. Due to the amount of warmth and heart that theSuperbaddirector injects into his film,it’s hard to seeAdventurelandas anything other than an ode to small-town summers.For as much as the characters talk about wanting to get out, the experiences they have will leave you affectionately looking back on the times when you were most content standing in a semicircle with friends smoking whatever and drinking found liquor in a parking lot. Or when some of your best conversations took place in parked cars at midnight, or when all you needed to be happy was access to someone’s dad’s cruddy light beers at a house party.
Jesse Eisenberg and Kristen Stewart Give an Authentic Portrayal of Young Summer Love
One of the key qualities that makesAdventurelandsuch a special film is theexceptional chemistry shared by its two leads. Eisenberg and Stewart are both incredibly believable as discontented early twenty-somethings, anda legitimate connection can be felt from the first moments they are on screen together.Though the film is timeless, the performances given by the two stars feel deeply tied to the era in whichAdventurelandwas released. It’s not hard to imagine both of their characters being fawned over by indie boys and girls in 2009. This aids thepermanent air of nostalgiathat surrounds the film. It brings the viewer back to the late 2000s just as much as it does the decade it’s actually set in.
While a lot of characters incoming-of-age moviestend to sound suspiciously like 35-year-old Hollywood screenwriters,Adventurelandexcels at making its characters sound, look, and feel like actual young people. The dialogue is choppy and awkward at times, giving the film a naturalistic feel. A climactic argument scene between James and Em near the end doesn’t play out like a cliché dramatic movie moment. Instead, it resembles what two emotional, in-over-their-heads kids would actually say to each other in a charged, upsetting, and confusing situation. When the characters do have their moments of coming across as potentially over-intellectual, it sounds more like college-aged kids reaching to sound mature and clever, rather than people who are actually wise beyond their years.
While James and Em’s relationship is ultimately derailed by the problems that plague it, the film ends on a hopeful note with the characters reconnecting in NYC. Though this could be dismissed as a typical Hollywood happy ending, there is something truthful to the idea that the issues that present themselves over the course of a summer tend to fade away once the season changes and people go back to their “real lives.” Mottola’s understanding of things like that is precisely what makesAdventurelandone of the greatest and most nostalgic summertime films ever made.
