Adventureland (2009)
Directed by Greg Mottola
It's the summer of 1987, and recent college grad James Brennan can't wait to begin his long-anticipated dream trip to Europe. Unfortunately, James' plans come to a screeching halt when his parents announce that they are unable to subsidize his trip. Forced to take a job at the local amusement park, James prepares for the worst summer ever, until he finds love with a captivating co-worker named Em.
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3 films that influenced Adventureland
What critics say influenced Adventureland
He’s one part Matthew McConaughey from “Dazed and Confused,” while also trying to set himself above the younger employees by referring to them as “kids.”
Its total recall of the ardour of youthful infatuation feels closer to something Eric Rohmer might have exhaled, or Linklaterâ??s Dazed And Confused.
The early scenes of the film are great, with Mottola creating a tone somewhat akin to Dazed and Confused -- nostalgic for a bygone era without making it all seem overly cheery or false, and with a very naturalistic feeling that often makes you feel like a fly on the wall to James and his friends, as they work and party their way through the summer.
He shows every bit as loving and pinpoint-perfect an observational eye for the late '80s as George Lucas did for the end of the greaser era in American Graffiti and Richard Linklater did for the free-ride '70s in Dazed and Confused.
Thing is, she's attracted to Mike (Ryan Reynolds), the older married guy who goes after younger chicks (a stock figure in most of these movies since at least Dazed and Confused).
As long as we’re tossing around comparisons, then think the cultural flashback of Dazed and Confused moved up a decade.
Adventureland seems to want desperately to be The Breakfast Club or 16 Candles, or maybe it simply wants to live in the same space those films in, right down to its setting back in good old 1987.
Mottola’s only mistake might have been in making this holdover summer job too meaningful, in the way that The Breakfast Club’s one detention attempted to diagnose everything that was wrong with authority and the kids.
So while it’s understandable that Mottola ultimately pulls his punches and pushes the film in a less credible direction than its premise initially suggests, it’s equally impossible to resist imagining how the now reclusive writer/director of such ’80s classics as The Breakfast Club and Pretty In Pink might have navigated the same waters.
Instead, the film is suffused with a warm, generous glow reminiscent of Almost Famous.
Similar to how we ?grew up? with junior Rolling Stone Magazine writer William Miller (played by Patrick Fugit) in Almost Famous , Eisenberg?s James allows each one of us to imagine a second chance at growing up.
Coming and going over the years, it's picked up steam and some hard and fast rules of late with the likes of Almost Famous, Rushmore, The Wackness, and now, from Superbad's Greg Mottola, Adventureland.