ADVENTURELAND

Written and Directed by Greg Mottola
Starring Jesse Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart, Bill Hader, Kristen Wiig and Ryan Reynolds


James Brennan: I’m amazed at how small my pay cheque is.
Joel: Well, we are working the jobs of pathetic, lazy morons.

Step right up! Step right up! Toss the ring on to the milk bottle and win a giant panda for your sweetheart! Ring toss not your game? Throw a ball and knock the hat off the dummy then. Win yourself a stuffed banana with googley eyes! But if you’re really looking for high stakes risks, try this game on for size. Go to college; make plans for the summer between your graduation and start of graduate school; watch it all fall apart at the last second; and then get yourself a job running games at the dilapidated amusement park you used to frequent when you were a kid. See if you’re smiling at the end of that one. This game is just as impossible to win and the prizes are nearly just as lame. Yes, there is plenty of supposed adventure to be had inside the safe confines of ADVENTURELAND, the name of both the aforementioned amusement park and the new movie by Greg Mottola, but the real adventure is waiting outside the supposed greatest place on earth. You just don’t know it yet.


The premise just vaguely described is actually the plight of one James Brennan (Jesse Eisenberg, THE SQUID AND THE WHALE). Being a young man and therefore inevitably naïve, he thought he had everything figured out. He was ready for a summer trek through Europe. He was ready to get an apartment in New York City and attend grad school in the fall. He was ready for everything except for the unpredictability of life. ADVENTURELAND may take place in 1987 but not much has changed as far as lofty ambitions being crushed by the harshness of real life goes. And this is the lesson that James must learn in what is described as one of those summers where it seems like nothing significant really happens but yet in hindsight ends up being momentously character building. For the viewer though, there really isn’t that much happening in this slice of life picture. The kids go to work, they smoke a lot of drugs and they hang out at lame yet popular local spots. Fortunately, love is in the air to make everything go that much faster.


Eisenberg and his young love interest, Em Lewin (Kristen Stewart, TWILIGHT) are two talented and compelling young actors. It is their presence that carries ADVENTURELAND from mildly bland mediocrity to slightly elevated decency. I realize that this is hardly a compliment but the remaining characters are hardly developed and ADVENTURELAND is often extremely unadventurous. Still, this lack of activity is precisely what gives the film its meaning. James and Em have put their lives on hold as though they believe that have no other choice. Their lives are just another amusement park game that is rigged and cannot be won under any circumstances but yet they keep playing because they cannot see that there are other games, other parks, other lives just waiting for them to pursue. Their childish profession only further exaggerates their halted development but their introduction to each other’s lives shows them both possibilities they had never imagined. James is a sensitive guy who never gets the girl and Em doesn’t believe she deserves a guy like James. Yet here they both are, enjoying each other. How did this happen and what else is waiting?


Mottola, who struck it big Hollywood styles last time out with SUPERBAD, took a decidedly much quieter approach with his follow up and comparisons would be entirely unfair. Like the summer that changed everything but only did so in retrospect, ADVENTURELAND is an adventure that is only fully appreciated when you realize just how much of its tone and themes have stayed with you long after the park has shut down for the night. After all, the real adventure of life only comes once you stop trying to delay it with excuses and obligations and take the themes out of the park.

PINEAPPLE EXPRESS

Written by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg
Directed by David Gordon Green
Starring Seth Rogen, James Franco, Danny McBride and Rosie Perez


Private Miller: I feel like a slice of butter melting all over a big ol’ pile of flapjacks … yeah.

I’m pretty sure my mother always told me that smoking pot was bad for you. She’s my mother so, naturally, I always believed her. Now, I’m not so sure though. She couldn’t possibly have seen PINEAPPLE EXPRESS before making this assertion. If she had, then she would know that smoking only leads to hilarity and kinship. At least that is one of the many valuable life lessons I learned while watching the latest Seth Rogen vehicle to come off the Judd Apatow assembly line. I also learned that paranoia can be a very good thing, that friends who smoke together stay together and that James Franco actually has a drastically different side to his usual stoic, dry presence. I think most importantly though, I learned that stoner movies, when they’re done right like this one, don’t require the audience to smoke up heavily beforehand in order to have a good time. Albeit, I’m sure a whole other kind of good time would be had if you did.


You could see this movie as an opportunity for Rogen to push his pot smoking agenda onto unsuspecting youths that think of his as some sort of demi-God after last year’s one-two punch, KNOCKED UP and SUPERBAD, or you could just drop the act and enjoy the trip. Besides, smoking is hardly over glorified in this film. Every time Rogen, as Dale Denton, a crafty process server, lights up, he finds himself in a whole heap of trouble. He makes stupid mistakes that lead to his deeper and deeper into despair. And while watching Rogen alone is certainly entertaining, watching him get goofy with a buddy is even better. The buddy here is the unexpected Franco. Franco plays Saul Silver, the drug dealer to Dale’s drug doer. Get these two in a forest and give them a little herbal amusement and there is no telling how stupid they will get and how far out in space their minds will go. There is one sure thing though, weed brings these two together and their lives are better for it.


Thank goodness these two have each other because they could never endure what they need to go through all alone. Saul sells Dale some of his highest-grade bud, called pineapple express. It’s so rare, so exclusive, that after Dale witness a homicide and dumps his roach at the scene, he believes that it can be tracked back to him. Saul must then get involved as he is the sole distributor of pineapple express and therefore the whole thing can be traced back to him. In order to get out of their unfortunate bind, the two must go to the source and get the bad guys, including a feisty Rosie Perez as a crooked cop, before the bad guys, and gals, get them. Many a stoner has inhaled and embarked on zany adventures before these two but how many find themselves in high speed car chases or live-or-die bang-up’s or even fleeing scenes of explosive proportions? Well, I can’t say actually but I can say that none have been this funny in what feels like a very long time (what feels even longer if you actually are stoned).


Dale and Saul are the new stoner buddies, the new Harold & Kumar, if you will. They are accidental action heroes whose pot smoking both gets them in and out of trouble. Unlike the punks responsible for the most recent Harold & Kumar disaster, the people behind PINEAPPLE EXPRESS are actually interested in making a solid film, one with an engaging story and consistent character development. Director David Gordon Green (SNOW ANGELS) knows that just because his characters are stoned out of their heads 99% of the time does not mean his audience will be necessarily. The audience might want to shut off and have a great time, either naturally or enhanced naturally, and that does not mean that you don’t actually have to try. When I want to shut off, I like to be around good people and let the laughs roll. Watching PINEAPPLE EXPRESS is like hanging out with the guys and I already want to hang out with these guys again next weekend.

SUPERBAD

Written by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg
Directed by Greg Mottola


Evan: I’m just sick of all the amateur stuff. If I’m paying top dollar, I want a little production value. Y’know, some editing, transitions, some music.

Seth: Well, I’m sorry, Evan, that the Coen brothers don’t direct the porn that I watch. They’re hard to get a hold of.

Ah, to be young and free. It was a simpler time when the pursuit of booze and babes was enough to drive a young man right through to adulthood. Alright, so this wasn’t my personal youth experience but it is the premise of director Greg Mottola’s SUPERBAD, a new breed of teenage sex comedy. Here, partying and getting naked with girls are exposed as a thinly veiled act of desperation to prove how grown up one is. The kids are speeding down a hill, screaming their excitement to the sky, but can see that they are also getting closer and closer to everything they’re afraid of, waiting for them at the bottom. Before they know it, high school will be over and Seth and Evan (Jonah Hill and Michael Cera), best friends since they were five, will find themselves going in separate directions to different colleges. While one raucous night finds them trying to score alcohol to impress the girls they each want to get with, it is what they learn about each other, their futures and themselves that will end up defining the night they thought would simply be the night they got some.


Whether Seth and Evan are trying on pants and debating what exactly is “too tight” or discussing the injustices of men having to hide their erections in shame from the rest of the world while buying drinks at the corner store, they are always hilarious. You could put these two in practically any scenario and the laughs would flow. They are drastically different but compliment each perfectly. Seth is loud and foul. Nearly every thought that comes out of his mouth is about sex and he is completely oblivious to the world around him. Meanwhile, Evan is mild mannered and meekly composed. He is constantly muttering sarcastic quips that most don’t hear and is acutely aware of his surroundings. The two are inseparable but one gets the impression their friendship is based more on its history than what they have in common. One thing they do have in common though is awkwardness. While one covers up his insecurity with obnoxious remarks and the other barely hides it at all, they both have each other to be themselves with. The beauty of their performances lies in the conveyance of the recently rising knowledge that the friendship that makes them feel safe is also now the friendship that is stopping them from going any further.


Written by KNOCKED UP star, Seth Rogen and long time friend, Evan Goldberg, SUPERBAD is at times genius in its subtlety. This is no easy feat considering how outrageous it is most of the time. Loosely basing Seth and Evan on themselves (sorry fellas but the names give it away), they manage to pinpoint the moment these boys become aware of their co-dependence. The two characters are so well drawn that you never want them to leave the screen. Only they do to make room for a third friend, Fogell (Christopher Mintz-Plasse). Fogell is somehow even more socially retarded than Seth and Evan and is himself a funny enough secondary character despite his entire existence being based on one-off joke that is given away in the preview (McLovin!). It is the direction his character takes the film in that is an unnecessary distraction. Fogell/McLovin spends his night riding around in the back of a police cruiser with two of the worst police officers ever to walk the beat (played by Rogen and Bill Hader, whom I would sooner never see on film again). The cops are such screw-ups that all they do is make every scenario they’re in worse than it was before they got there. With most of their humour falling flat and not coming close to measuring up to Seth and Evan, they have a similar effect on the film itself. Filler is rarely fun and here it exposes the writers’ insecurity regarding their own abilities.


So this is the story of how Seth Rogen is both his best friend and worst enemy at the same time. Alongside Goldberg, the two have stated publicly how they never want to grow up. While that gives them a particular insight into the pivotal crossroads Seth and Evan, the characters, find themselves at, it also makes SUPERBAD, a movie about maturity which is meant to be immature at times, less mature than it actually should be. For the most part, SUPERBAD is surprisingly mature, while still maintaining its youthful glow. Seems to me that Seth and Evan, the writers, could stand to learn a thing a two about evolution from the characters they created in their own image. Growing up isn’t all that bad and it can still be freackin’ hilarious.