Monday, September 21, 2009

See 'Adventureland", if you want to stab yourself in the eyes with a sewing needle


My girlfriend is a good sport. She's a trooper. I usually am making the movie decisions on nights in, and as you can guess from this blog, I lean heavily towards extremely violent movies. She puts up with it very well, sometimes even enjoying the film. Last night we went to the RedBox in my local Shaw's and it was her turn to pick. She chose Adventureland, which I thought looked like it had some potential. Someone from the incredibly funny Superbad was involved and it is set in the 80s at a cheesy theme park. It is advertised as a comedy. If its a comedy, its the least funny comedy ever, and even if it was supposed to be presented as the romance film that it is, this cornball flick's minor attempts at comic relief fall flat.
From the first 5 seconds of the film, I knew I wasn't going to like it. There is an extended shot of leading man (boy) Jesse Eisenberg's face as he stares longingly at his girlfriend. If this was Michael Cera, (as I suspect it was supposed to be) this could have actually been funny. Because Michael Cera is funny. Cera can affectively combine the awkward sympathy romance angle with comedy. Eisenberg can't. As a leading man, Eisenberg comes across as a pretentious jerk. And furthermore, I don't like his face. In fact, there is something about his face that just makes me want to plant one of these in his suckhole. (Author's note: I'm shaking my fist in the air right now.)
Eisenberg goes to work at a theme park the summer after he graduates from college, and we are introduced to all the 'wacky' people he works with. He meets the chick from Twilight and the rest of the movie follows an extremely predictable route that ends up with them being together. The normally very funny Bill Hader, as the park's manager, attempts to liven up the proceedings and was either having an off-day or the script was just extremely unfunny. The chick from Twilight acts the exact same as she always does and doesn't make a very compelling female romantic lead. The only thing I liked about her was her T Shirts. There is a "dumb hot girl" character named Lisa P who I actually liked way more than the chick from Twilight. She wears rad clothes and does synchronized dance moves with this black chick. She's cool. Meanwhile, the chick from Twilight is banging Ryan Reynolds, who continues his career of being not-funny.
Basically, I could only recommend this movie to people who have a strong desire to stab their eyeballs out with a sewing needle. I half wanted to do that and half wanted to punch Eisenberg in the face. If you are say, entering a charity boxing match where you will be fighting Jesse Eisenberg and you need to watch something to get you pumped up to punch him in the suck hole, than this would be recommended, as well.

1 comment:

Jaefur said...

Dig the Rob Riggle-Wine Mixer ref. I can't recall the reason, but Hader didn't exactly have carte blanche over his character. He's a good listen whenever Bill Simmons does a podcast w/him. In fact listening to him talk about the experience made me take it off my "maybe if it's on cable in ten years and the weather sucks, I'll watch it" list.

Nobody puts Hader in the corner....