Adventureland is a very good 20-something comedy with mildly serious overtones.
I don't tend to go to teen/20-something flicks these days, because most of them are gorefests or grossfests. And, let's face it, I'm in my 50s, and these movies generally are aimed at, well, teenagers. But a good teen/20-something flick is one that an broader audience should want to see anyway. American Graffiti. Say Anything. Clueless (heck, even Emma as a really-retro "teen flick"). I planned to see Adventureland as it was shot locally and I knew a handful of the extras (hi Ryan and Jojo) in the movie.
But, I also wanted to see Adventureland was because I worked at Kennywood for a few weeks in 1979. I made T-shirts and enjoyed that, but then the woman who'd been the T-shirt maker the previous year wanted her job back so I was kicked over to Skee-Ball. I lasted one shift in Skee-Ball and quit on the spot. No job is worth working in the noisy hell that is Skee-Ball. *oh the horror*
Adventureland was mostly shot at Kennywood. It was set in the faraway past of 1987, and reminds you how, well, timeless, large sections of amusement parks can be. I was unfamiliar with most of the actors in the movie, and all of them favorably impressed me, particularly the leads (Jesse Eisenberg and Kristen Stewart) and their slightly older friend Joel (Martin Starr). Eisenberg is a frustrated college grad who wants to go to grad school and Stewart is a disaffected college student who wants to get as far away from her father and step-mother as she can. There's the usual sex, drugs (mostly pot, some booze) and rock 'n' roll of many early-20-something flicks. But the kids did more than swear at each other or behave in disgusting ways. They reflected on where they were and where they hoped to be going...if they knew. They were all in the same boat - trapped in a sort of limbo between childhood and adulthood. And most of them wanted out.
I enjoyed Adventureland much more than I expected to. Greg Mottola, who both wrote and directed the movie, fairly accurately recreated those limbo jobs, which, once in a very great while, could change your life.
One of the funniest things I saw (and this probably only amused me, but what-the-hell) was that the Kennywood office hadn't changed at all since 1979. It still had a horrible rug and file cabinets that were always in the way. The movie ventured out of Kennywood, mostly to travel to dive bars, the kids' parents' houses, and provide a few nice shots of downtown Pittsburgh with the one of the bridges over the Allegheny framing the scene.
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