‘Adventureland’ is an amusing coming-of-age tale

Three out of four stars (Rated R for language, drug use, and sexual references) Running time: 106 minutes. Reviewed at The Woodlands Tinseltown 17 on April 3.

In 1976 I sold dictation machines for an office equipment company, trying to save enough money to attend graduate school.

Totally out of my element and comfort zone of life, I befriended a small cadre of rival salespeople who became my support group for failure. We would meet at Denny’s for coffee a couple of mornings a week and exchange dead end sales leads while gabbing mostly about women and sports. Then lunch would roll along and we’d all call it a day and go home or head back to the office.

My total sales commissions for two months of futility amounted to $12.

That’s why salesmen in despair movies like David Mamet’s “Glengarry Glen Ross” and Barry Levinson’s “Tin Men” are personal favorites. While I flopped miserably at that line of work, the experience helped pave the way for what eventually became my career—only in my case I took the extended scenic route.

It’s also why I enjoyed “Adventureland,” the new coming-of-age comedy that opened this past week. Writer-director Greg Mottola (“Superbad”) based the story on his experiences as a young college graduate working for a summer at a low rent amusement park in Long Island while he weighed his career options.

We are introduced to James Brennan (Jesse Eisenberg of “The Squid and the Whale”), just graduated from college with plans to spend the summer 1987 in Europe and then onto Columbia University to study journalism. The problem is his father has been demoted and the money isn’t there to pursue either venture.

Stuck with his parents in suburban Pittsburgh, James has to go to work—oh, the agony—to help underwrite the cost of his own graduate school education. James obviously spent too much time in the library reading Kant because he has no discernible job skills—“I’m not even qualified for manual labor,” he laments.

Ah, but there is one employer of last resort in town—Adventureland, a run down amusement park run by a married couple named Bobby (Bill Hader) and Paulette (Kristen Wiig). There are two job opportunities: games or rides, so stated on different color employee t-shirts. James wants to work rides, which is light duty, but Bobby places him in games—“You’re more of a game guy.”

Except that the games for the most part are rigged so that no one wins.

But the heart of the story is based on James coming out of his pot-smoking cocoon existence and learning about life in the real world. He interacts with the wacky employees who have more of a day-to-day outlook rather than any goals or plans.

One such employee is the four-eyed egghead Joel (Martin Starr) who astutely puts things into perspective: “We are doing the work of pathetic morons.”

Another is the brooding Em (Kristen Stewart of “Twilight”). She maintains a secretive romantic dalliance with the married maintenance worker Connell (Ryan Reynolds), who claims to have jammed with Lou Reed. Virginal James falls for Em, who carries a load of emotional baggage from the tragic loss of her mother two years earlier.

“Adventureland” is not an outlandish comedy like “Superbad.” Uneven and downright bumpy at times, it’s a reflective look at life in the 80’s, backed by a terrific soundtrack—“Rock Me, Amadeus” and the like—and enough chuckles to justify two hours of your life.

Gary Brown is host of the Lone Star College-Montgomery Film Series.  For information call (936) 273-7324 or email garyb@lonestar.edu Visit the “Brown on Film” blog at http://gbrown.wordpress.com.