Adventureland

[MacGuffin]

Trailer here.

Release Date: March 27th, 2009 (wide)

Starring: Jesse Eisenberg, Ryan Reynolds, Kristen Stewart, Martin Starr, Bill Hader, Kristen Wiig
 
Directed by: Greg Mottola 

Premise: When an uptight recent college graduate realizes he cannot afford his European dream vacation, he is forced to take a minimum-wage job at a local amusement park.

[Stefen]

This looks like a fun summer movie. The type where it's starting to warm up and you can bust out your short shorts and hot box your friends car and go catch a mindless flick.

[SiliasRuby]

Hell ya stefen! Lets do that sometime!

[pete]

bill haverchuck!

[MacGuffin]

Red Band Trailer

[Stefen]

Everyone I've talked to who saw the sneak peak says this is awesome. I think I'm gonna check it out this weekend.

[Redlum]

I'm really excited about this. Please post your reviews!

As much as I enjoyed Superbad this one really feels like its going to have some staying power.

[Stefen]

So I went and saw it. It was awesome. It really has it's heart in the right place. Everyone really feels like a real person instead of a character in a comedy. Some of the editing was sloppy, but it was really funny and never got too sappy or corny.

Ryan Reynolds is really underrated. He's always putting in good work in whatever he does. He's in some shitty movies, but they're never shitty because of him. If anything, he makes them watchable.

I think the flick really benefited from not having a giant name in it. It's got names, but it doesn't have a Seth Rogen or one of the big Apatow guys. It really helped the sense of realism.

Kristen Stewart is kind of a shitty actress. Her range is non-existent. She's always so conflicted. Her acting consists of being confused all the time and not knowing how to answer shit. "Uh, yeah, I mean, sure. It's okay, I guess. I was just....doing laundry." You suck!

I love movies like this where the minor characters are some of the best things about the movie.

Also this movie has awesome guilty pleasure tunes in it.

Probably my favorite movie of the year (so far). Imagine that.

[pete]

i loved it.  the best portrayal of a "nice guy" so far with a lot of insights and empathy for all sorts of young adult sexual behaviors.  I thought I'd like kristen stewart more than I did like her.  she was a good character, but was not as smokey as she was in Into the Wild.  She did have one very heartfelt line with a heartbreaking delivery.  Jesse Eisenberg was good, he was like the actor's version of Michael Cera.  Was this his third time as a virgin in movies?  The movie gets a lot of things right, particularly the moments ruined by the guy too paralyzed to make a move.  Pretty great.

My favorite thing about the script though, was that there wasn't a real "ticking bomb" though the story took place over a summer and nothing was really at "stake" either, just relationships that mean a lot to the characters and the audience.  So fuck your proper drama structures.  Wisdom and warmth and vulgarity can sometimes drive a film beautifully.

[Pas]

Ryan Reynolds is really underrated. He's always putting in good work in whatever he does. He's in some shitty movies, but they're never shitty because of him. If anything, he makes them watchable.

true that !

I'm gonna see it soon, can't wait

[Gold Trumpet]

Ryan Reynolds is really underrated. He's always putting in good work in whatever he does. He's in some shitty movies, but they're never shitty because of him. If anything, he makes them watchable.

true that !

I'm gonna see it soon, can't wait

Stefen really wanted to say that Ryan Reynolds is a Green Bay Packers fan, too. Canadian by birth, but Packers fan by conquest. That's really why he's special.

[Stefen]

^lol. Oh, wow -- all of a sudden Ryan Reynolds is OVERrated. 

[Ghostboy]

I agree on the Reynolds front. I like him in everything - I just usually don't like his movies. I want to cast him in something someday.

[w/o horse]

  There are certain movies that I appreciate without liking very much, and there are certain movies that I like alright but couldn't watch again.  This movie is one or both of those.  Really graceful cinematic poetry but I think it was too authentic.  Sometimes people don't want to say that as a negative but I don't mind:  this movie was as fucking boring in certain parts as I'm sure the actual lived experience was.  Rouben Mamoulian used to say that you can't make a movie that directly depicts life because life stops you.  Actually he said "I do appreciate the mastery behind it, but my heart is not in it, because to me naturalism, realism, physical realism is a moribund thing. It has a dead end. So you came as close as you can to life and then what? Life stops you. That's the limit. Realism is good for travelogues and documentaries or the newsreels but not for fiction films. Poetry, imagination, style have no limit and I'd much rather fly in those areas."  I also always like to quote a description of Kandinsky's artistic method I read once, that he "abstracted the intrinsic elements."

  It's not an absolute.  For example I really like the cinema of Aaron Katz and Andrew Bujalski and Alexander Payne and etc etc there are many examples of filmmakers who I think approach filmmaking as Snoozeland did and are still able to touch me move me etc etc.

  When I think of this movie I think of 2-3 scenes I really liked but I don't think fondly of the movie as a whole.

  Soon I'll talk about how much I loved Minnie and Moskowitz and Love Streams and I'll make a point to try and expand on some of things I want to say here.

[Stefen]

So you like Fast and Furious for having a couple really fun parts, but you hate this one for having a couple really fun parts?