Anybody see "Adventureland"?

[liberalpragmatist]

I saw this over the weekend. It looks like the weekend ticket sales were poor, which may be due to bad marketing. The film was billed in trailers and ads as a witty but raunchy teen sex comedy in the vein of Superbad or anything in the Apatow universe. In fact, it's 180 degrees apart from that.

It's not even a comedy - it's a coming-of-age drama with some light comedic touches. Though a *few* jokes may be of the gross-out variety (a couple boner jokes, some vomiting), even those are a lot more subtle and less outrageous than what you see in comparable movies. On the whole, it's very similar in feel to The Wonder Years, Freaks & Geeks or (from the film world) Almost Famous or Garden State.

I really liked it and wondered if anybody else felt the same way. True, the basic plot was nothing terribly original, and shows and movies about angst-y, awkward teens and twenty-somethings are a dime-a-dozen, but the acting was excellent, the script was smart and endearing and the overall feel was that it was incredibly realistic and enjoyable. And where the film did depart from some of its peers was that it left aside conventions of a villain - even the foils seem sympathetic and three dimensional.

Plus, the soundtrack was great - The Replacements, Husker Du, The Cure. (If you were in your 20s in the '80s - something I can't say I was - you'll probably enjoy it even more.)

[AwakeAtLast]

1. I would love to see it

The reviews I read were pretty glowing. Kind of a "Dazed and Confused" for the 80's teens.

Class of '88 right here. :D

[Iggo]

2. I didn't like it. In fact I walked out.

They sold it as a comedy, and that's what I thought I was buying. Besides the dopey central character, the only other remotely likeable character was the pretty girl who works at the amusement park because her Dad is home sick or injured. She makes an entrance about 30 or 40 minutes in. I left about ten minutes later thinking, "This is about as good as it's gonna get. I'm leaving before I start to hate her, too."

To be fair, maybe if I hadn't felt like a bait-and-switch victim I might've given this movie a chance....waaaaay later on like HBO or something.

[Symarip]

3. Holy shitballs

It sucked beyond words. It wasn't even angsty like most teenaged dramedies. It was just shitty. If I was working in GTMO, I think you could effectively show this movie instead of waterboard training and be infinitely more effective.