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Don’t get me wrong: the writer-director (The Daytrippers) certainly has a knack for place and time. He doesn’t abuse the clothes and the tunes when establishing the nostalgia for an era, and he understands that coming of age takes time, a combination of big events and small ones, a medley of comedy and drama (something the Superbad-heavy marketing willfully fails to understand).

And it’s not exactly Eisenberg’s fault, either. He’s been good at playing the educated-but-awkward young adult since Roger Dodger and The Squid and the Whale; he’s like Michael Cera with an unwitting air of condescension. No one can blame him for resenting a summer job that he’s insanely overeducated and underqualified for, but forced to take, and no one could honestly blame him for going ga-ga over Em (Kristen Stewart), a girl with Troubles of Her Own who still knows how to have fun.

But there’s a remaining disconnect between a guy trying to figure out what he wants in life and a guy lamenting his botched summer trip to Europe and struggling to make it to Columbia in the fall, and a remaining disconnect between the wistful nature of Mottola’s material and the occasional raucous interruption by either Bush’s feasibly obnoxious Frigo or the hilarious park-owning pair of Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader. The two 'SNL' stars feel like they're out of the broadest possible version of this movie (again, the one being sold in all the recent TV spots), and yet they often arrive as a welcome breath of silliness from all the moping between James, Em, the pipe-puffing Joel (Martin Starr), and the lady-loving Mike (Ryan Reynolds, filling the straight-man role with surprising restraint). It's a movie that doesn't know what it wants to be about people who don't know who they want to be, and the meandering demeanor sometimes gets the better of the proceedings.

To his credit, at least Mottola isn’t trying to emulate teen films of the era, but it’s hard to say that 'Adventureland' stands to join their ranks. It has the when and where down pat, but the who and why could use another shot if he really wants to take home the giant-ass panda.

link directly to this review at https://www.efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=18104&reviewer=409
originally posted: 04/06/09 05:03:11
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