Adventureland

Inspired by writer/director Greg Mottola's own true-life job-from-hell experience, Adventureland stars The Education of Charlie Banks' Jesse Eisenberg as an uptight recent college graduate who discovers that he'll have to get a degrading minimum-wage job at a local amusement park instead of spending ...more

This dismal teen comedy's insurmountable problem is that its main character is a couple of years past being a teen. He's also whiney, dull, and charm-free, but those shortcomings are almost beside the point. A "loser gets laid" plot works best if the protagonist either isn't old enough to drink, or if he is so embarrassingly far from adolescence that the premise itself is funny. Instead, Adventureland offers sleep inducingly passive 22-year-old male virgin James (Jesse Eisenberg), a recent ...more

Touted in ads as the latest raucous comedy from the director of Superbad, Adventureland isn't what it looks like -- but it's still good. With an even makeup of one part '80s nostalgia, one part rowdy teen farce, and one part pensive, emotional drama, the film may seem a little modest at first (especially for those expecting it to push the fantastic limits of manic R-rated teenage hilarity the way its predecessor did), but don't write it off as emo. Most of the sentimental stuff is genuine and ...more