It's the story of a recent Oberlin graduate returning home an overqualified intellect not really qualified for anything. The story of a meandering 20-something forced to forego Ivy League ambitions to take on a menial job at Adventureland, a decaying backwater amusement park where future takes pause to take in the shitty glory of it all.Sitting in on a Monday night showing of Adventureland, Greg Mottola's newest ode to youth, I was struck by the realization that James's story may not be so different from my own. Our liberal arts degrees in hand, Pomona students enter the world with an appreciation for the life of the mind, but little knowledge of life itself. James, an Oberlin alum, trades the halls of the elite Ohio liberal arts college for life back home in Pittsburgh, his medieval ruminations displaced by crooked carnival games and giant ass pandas. He was supposed to travel through Europe, supposed to study journalism at Columbia, supposed to find love. Instead, he lives at home doing minimum wage work to kill time while he waits for the life he thought he'd have to start. Just as you'd expect, it never arrives. But James moves on anyway.
Just as he did in Superbad, Mottola is able in this film to find comedy in reality with situational humor derived more from the audience's understanding of the character than from any simple gaff. The acting is nuanced with a clear understanding of vulnerabilities and insecurities that all of the characters, and all people really, face as they come to terms with life as it is and not as it should be. And the soundtrack manages to flow seamlessly from saccharine 80's pop ("Rock Me Amadaeus" plays no less than 5 times) to The Velvet Underground. It's a transformative film in the vein of Superbad that deals with real issues and the real people dealing with them. A must see.
