I saw… part of … the new movie Adventureland yesterday. I say only “part of” because I walked out toward the end.
Can someone who actually sat through the whole movie spoil the ending for me? I walked out at the part where
James was telling Em that he had gone on 1 date with Lisa P.
Thanks,
J.
Ok, so Mike (Ryan Reynolds) just keeps getting into romantic comedy situations and can’t seem to get himself out of them. Joel (the guy studying Russian literature, played by Martin Starr) remains the guy you’ve seen somewhere before but never can place. Em becomes an actress and goes on to star in a vampire-themed movie and her face becomes famous but no one can ever remember her name. James continues his sibling rivalry with his sister and they try to one-up each other for jobs.Ok, that didn’t work as well as I thought it would. Why did you walk out? Was it because it was more serious than the trailers made it out to be?
Seriously, what do you think happened? It’s a predictable movie (once you get past the “it’s more serious than the trailers made it out to be” part), but my husband and I enjoyed it. I’ve never worked at an amusement park so I couldn’t relate really, but I liked most of the characters. Or at least, most of them had more depth than I would have expected. Even Lisa P. turned out to be more interesting than she first appeared.
Why did I walk out? I guess boredom. It didn’t interest me. The “more serious” part didn’t bother me. It was just VERY SLOW and there wasn’t anything new in it. I could come up with intellectually rational reasons about why I it was boring but the real reason is that I saw no reason to stay.
J.
[spoiler]James finds out Em is banging Ryan Reynolds. He remembers Lisa P. telling him that Reynolds brings chicks to his mom’s basement to bang them, so he goes and waits outside the house and confronts her when she comes out (no explanation as to how he knows where Ryan Reynolds’ mom’s is. As it happens she was going there to tell RR it was over, but since Hollywood romances require a temporary separation before the happy reunion, this fails to get communicated to him. In an act of revenge he spreads the word through the whole park (via Lisa P) that Em was banging RR. This causes Em to quit.
James then becomes depressed, and one night, while driving his dad’s car, he finds a bottle of booze that his alcoholic dad has stashed there, starts swigging from the bottles and crashes into a tree, causing enough damage to the car that he has to use up all the money he’d saved for his Europe trip.
At the end, we see him finding Em in NYC, going to her apartment and explaining that he’s going to live at the Y and try to get a shitty job. Then they knock boots. The end. All pretty cliched, really.[/spoiler]
I thought the movie was mildly amusing, with some laughs from secondary characters, but it’s not really as much of a comedy as the trailers make it appear. It’s basically a routine love story with not-very-interesting central characters.
The weakest thing for me was that I don’t think the movie gives any good explanation for why Em would want to have an affair with the RR character. We never sense that she likes him, or is even especially hot for him. There’s no good explanation as to why she hates her stepmother either. Em just comes off like a self-absorbed child when she throws a tantrum at her parents’ dinner party. I actually though Lisa P. was a more intriguing character.
As Ebert said: The trailer is the movie the studio wishes had been made.
I enjoyed the film. I knew ahead of time that the film was quieter and more introspective than the trailer made it seem, so I was in the mood for that.
Just saw this on a flight back from Europe this week. Out of curiosity, do you mind giving your age?
I enjoyed the film–no great shakes but fun and involving, though I’ll admit to having a soft spot for Eisenberg and a hot spot for Stewart (which is why I refuse to see Twilight).
Interestingly, Eisenberg, within a span of a few months, is going from Adventureland to Zombieland.
I think it would’ve made an interesting story from a friend telling you how he met his wife, but it was definitely lacking something as a movie. I found it very hard to buy that either Em or Lisa P. would be interested in James. He was sweet but not terribly interesting and had zero sex appeal.
There’s been a spate of movies where guys get way hotter girls than possible in the last few years. Knocked Up, Superbad, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, etc. This is another, less funny one.