- Is this supposed to be my generation’s Reality Bites? People who graduate with pointless degrees who then schlep around in low-grade depressions because they’re finally realising they have gained no skills to prepare them for the real world? I’m allowed to say this because I have a BFA, which we all know stands for Bachelor of Fuck All.
- Misleading trailer alert: this movie is dreadfully dramatic and not nearly as funny as it wants you to think it is. It’s relying too heavily on Greg Mottola’s cred from Superbad to get you into the theatre but delivers a completely different movie. Which is fine, there’s nothing wrong with this being a different movie than Superbad, but don’t market it as a comedy when it’s not. Any teenage boys hoping for lots of dirty sex jokes are going to be really unhappy to find that this is actually a depressing romance movie. (Also, I was unhappy to find that as well, despite not being a teenage boy.) I know the very act of marketing is in putting a spin on a product to sell it to a particular audience, but I hate it when trailers are just so vastly different from the actual movie itself.
- Most of the good jokes relied heavily on the audience being familiar with College 101 courses in liberal arts, so I’m not sure if the target audience is really going to laugh terribly much at jokes about semiotics, Trotsky, or practical nihilism.
- I would have been more satisfied if James and Em hadn’t ended up together as they inevitably did. Sometimes you just have a shitty summer and you don’t get the girl because she’s actually pretty messed up too. She moves away, end of story. Blah.
- Was Lou Reed really that big in the late eighties? Big enough that kids who were born when he was still in the Velvet Underground actually care enough a bout his music? This isn’t to say that I didn’t enjoy the Lou Reed content — I did! — just that I didn’t feel it was spectacularly plausible that gaggles of teenage park-goers would care that Ryan Reynolds had (claimed to have) jammed with the great Mr. Reed. Any excuse to play “Satellite of Love” in a movie, though, is an excuse I am willing to abide by.
- Do you know who is wonderful? Martin Starr. I was quite happy that he was third billed in the credits at the start because I feel like he needs more credit for what he does. I’ve been re-watching Freaks and Geeks again and he is so absolutely fantastic as Bill on that show because he just has this amazingly innate ability to play guys who are uncool and who never get the girl but who are sure of themselves and their interests anyway. I loved the part where he tried to convince the girl he made out with while drunk to read his favourite Gogol novel and even after she harshly rejected him, he’s still like “Okay, but this is still a good book and you should still read it.” I just feel like he’s the only character I could remotely care about because he wasn’t all self-involved and pretentious; Jesse Eisenberg’s James sounded on par with his character in The Squid & The Whale and you kind of want him to just cut the bullshit when saying things like how his feelings for Em are “vast”. I don’t know. I just want Martin Starr to be in more stuff because he’s fantastic.
- I would hate this Frigo kid in real life for being such an obnoxious meathead, but he added a much needed dose of humour to an otherwise dour film.
- The scene involving Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader gluing eyes onto stuffed bananas was priceless. When Wiig added the eyepatch? OMG.
- Again, what is with Rush? There’s that one dude who pretends to play drums on some song of theres and while thankfully they didn’t dub over the actual song like they did in the trailer, it’s still a reference to Rush. Just… kill it. Kill it now. This is so unnecessary.
Adventureland
I need movies where I can care about the main characters and this is not one of those movies.
IMDB Plot Synopsis A comedy set in the summer of 1987 and centered around a recent college grad (Eisenberg) who takes a nowhere job at his local amusement park, only to find it's the perfect course to get him prepared for the real world.
I am seeing this solely for Martin Starr, and maybe a little for Kristen Stewart because I think she’s cute. But if Martin Starr weren’t in it, I would not care one bit.
Hey Liz – this is a bit strange but could you send me an email? I was following your comments over at Film Junk on the “Twilight” review and wanted to chat with about something related but there’s no contact information on the site.