Adventureland: I Beg to Differ Mr. Sokol

by Tim Delaney

Adventureland is not the movie you think it is. The commercials all billed it as a hilarious comedy, but in reality it’s more of a dramatic, semi-autobiographical look at a crazy summer. The director, Greg Mottola, based the story and titular theme park off of a summer job he once suffered through, and though the story is mostly fabricated, it is still at its core based on this real life experience. As a result, there’s nothing particularly wacky or exciting that happens to the characters, which is why to many this film would be a disappointment. The film instead focuses on portraying James Brennan, the main character as played by Jesse Eisenberg, as he slowly learns to keep his life intact despite its problems.

The entire point of James working at Adventureland is to give him a low point to start at. He just graduated from college, and despite his intense focus to get his dream job, he is already broke and working at a run-down amusement park. While his friends are off touring Europe, he has to worry over the very real possibility that he might become stranded in a life of awful jobs if he can’t get enough money for grad school. It’s at this point that James makes friends with the other workers at Adventureland, and his life begins to change. The change is slow, almost too imperceptible, but gradually the odd friends and complicated romances teach him to not just let go of his life. It’s a far cry from the overwrought moralized endings of most movies, but as Adventureland draws to a close James finally decides to keep working towards his dream and pursue something important that he almost let slip away (revealing what would be a spoiler, so I’ll just let that hang vaguely).

If this whole thing sounds horribly uninteresting to you, don’t see the movie. Yes, it is occasionally funny, particularly when Bill Hader’s character shows up to inject some much-needed insanity into the equation, but no, it will not impress you if you aren’t interested. It has its faults; the writing occasionally plummets in quality, some characters are bland and unoriginal, and the running time is too long. This movie is far from classic, and I definitely wouldn’t say it was one of my favorites, but that doesn’t make it a terrible movie. It’s about a guy learning to take control of his life, and I can dig that, but there are many who can’t. See the film if you can, and don’t if you can’t. It’s a simple as that.