There are good movies that are advertized correctly, and then there is Adventureland.The draw for me was that it’s directed by the same guy who did Superbad, a film I saw an obscene amount of times in the theatre and laughed every time. Thanks to the trailer I thought I was going to be getting the same thing with this movie. I was sorely disappointed.Jesse Eisenberg gave a really great Michael Cera impression. Kristen Stewart is a great actress if you call blinking really quickly and running her fingers forlornly through her hair acting. Martin Starr and Bill Hader are CRIMINALLY underused. I would have watched a movie that just focused on them. Ryan Reynolds could have taken a few protips from Jason Bateman on making the older married man charming and not completely smarmy.I was bored. There were a few bright shining moments (again, mostly having to do with Martin Starr and Bill Hader) but they were few and far between. About midway through I had to pee and I thought that maybe if I got up and left I’d miss the point where the movie got good. I didn’t. That point never came.The soundtrack is good (the running joke with a certain German one hit wonder made me chuckle) but I could be biased because any time a Poison song is used in a movie it makes me smile.I think maybe taking the teen angst class has ruined me for movies like these. The parents…I don’t understand what they were trying to do-giving the father a problem with alcohol. Giving KStew’s parents a problem with her behavior. Nothing added whatso ever. Subtract them and the movie is shockingly, exactly the same (and a good 20 minutes shorter).It was a quiet movie, and while quiet can be good it was not in this case. If this movie was marketed differently I wouldn’t have even considered going.

There are good movies that are advertized correctly, and then there is Adventureland.
The draw for me was that it’s directed by the same guy who did Superbad, a film I saw an obscene amount of times in the theatre and laughed every time. Thanks to the trailer I thought I was going to be getting the same thing with this movie. I was sorely disappointed.
Jesse Eisenberg gave a really great Michael Cera impression. Kristen Stewart is a great actress if you call blinking really quickly and running her fingers forlornly through her hair acting. Martin Starr and Bill Hader are CRIMINALLY underused. I would have watched a movie that just focused on them. Ryan Reynolds could have taken a few protips from Jason Bateman on making the older married man charming and not completely smarmy.
I was bored. There were a few bright shining moments (again, mostly having to do with Martin Starr and Bill Hader) but they were few and far between. About midway through I had to pee and I thought that maybe if I got up and left I’d miss the point where the movie got good. I didn’t. That point never came.
The soundtrack is good (the running joke with a certain German one hit wonder made me chuckle) but I could be biased because any time a Poison song is used in a movie it makes me smile.
I think maybe taking the teen angst class has ruined me for movies like these. The parents…I don’t understand what they were trying to do-giving the father a problem with alcohol. Giving KStew’s parents a problem with her behavior. Nothing added whatso ever. Subtract them and the movie is shockingly, exactly the same (and a good 20 minutes shorter).
It was a quiet movie, and while quiet can be good it was not in this case. If this movie was marketed differently I wouldn’t have even considered going.