Showing posts with label Greg Mottola. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Greg Mottola. Show all posts

Friday, July 12, 2013

Adventureland
















ADVENTURELAND             A-                    
USA  (107 mi)  2009  d:  Greg Mottola                 Official Site

They hate people like me in Pittsburgh.  I’m a romantic who actually reads poetry for fun. 
—James Brennan (Jesse Eisenberg)

What appears to be a cliché’d and formulaic summer romance story where the majority of the characters, especially the adults, resemble life on sitcom TV, instead turns into something decidedly different where the major players are surprisingly authentic, especially the way they express their self doubts, which is what this is really all about.  While for most, TWILIGHT (2008) would be the door to discovering Kristen Stewart, but in my case it was INTO THE WILD and THE CAKE EATERS, two 2007 releases both shot earlier which along with her performance here reveal a surprising range on her part.  She plays Em, an alienated girl with a dark edge that she doesn’t really like about herself, as much of it is in reaction to the shit and lovelessness that has been imposed upon her tender young age, but it’s where she’s forced to spend most of her time, so it follows her like a dark shadow.  Into her life strolls James, Jesse Eisenberg, the horrid “I hate my mom” character from THE SQUID AND THE WHALE (2005), an overly naïve but nice kid who’s so nervous most of the time that he confesses his most intimate secrets to total strangers.  They’re an odd couple, as they don’t really fit, and she’s more mature and having an affair with the married Clu Galager type repairman/would-be-indie-rock-star (Ryan Reynolds) who simply gets into her pants whenever he has a spare moment.  They all find themselves working together at a run down amusement park called Adventureland during the summer of 1987 in Pittsburgh, a horrible place where dreams seem to die.   

Backtracking a bit, James was heading to grad school at Columbia University in the fall on a scholarship, but his plans change drastically when his closet alcoholic father gets transferred to a less lucrative position.  So instead of traveling to Europe with a friend over the summer where he hoped to get laid and get the virgin stigma off his back, he has to get a job to help pay his way and let his friend travel without him, leaving him a large sack of good weed which he hopes will help keep him relaxed over the summer, where in the fall they plan to be roommates in New York City.  With no real job experience, the only available job is at a hole-in-the-wall amusement park that seems run by the last vestiges of humanity left on earth after the apocalypse, as no one in their right mind would work there willingly.  But instead of another obnoxious summer movie laden with grotesque physical comedy, that’s only the undercard to what turns out to be the bigger picture, a tender, coming-of-age love story that develops from the bowels of this hell on earth, a place where the same horrid songs repeat endlessly, like Falco’s “Rock Me Amadeus” Falco - Rock Me Amadeus: Best song in the World - YouTube (3:25), and the games are rigged to guarantee nobody wins the big panda bear as a prize.  Despite hundreds of reasons why anyone should hate this movie, with plenty of barf and getting socked in the balls jokes along with exaggerated caricature, where every adult is typecast as a humorless strain of human species, where life is taken *way* too seriously, from their offspring breeds hope eternal.  From this doomed and broken down amusement park filled with people with stagnant and dead end lives, the characters of James and Em turn out to really mean something, as they’re authentic voices of a voiceless generation, similar but hardly equal to DONNIE DARKO (2001), as both are brilliantly edited films set in the 1980’s featuring a treasuretrove of imminently listenable music.  Here the soundtrack is filled with Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground, the New York Dolls, the Replacements, Hüsker Dü, The Cure, Crowded House, Poison and others along with an ambitious score written by Yo La Tengo, contributing especially memorable sequences, like Crowded House’s “Don’t Dream it’s Over” Adventureland - Fireworks Clip - YouTube (2:37) as fireworks explode over James and Em on the 4th of July, or Robert Smith singing Cure’s “Just Like Heaven” Ruma - Adventureland - YouTube (2:25, playing here over the movie trailer) as the two of them ecstatically play bumper cars together.  

Add to this motley crew the downhearted voice of nihilism, Joel (Martin Starr), even more geeky than James, a guy enthralled with the anguish of Russian literature, in particular Nikolai Gogol who all but destroyed romantic notions with monstrous imagery where no human horror is left unspared.  As this group spends time together, more a collection of random acts than a story, James is actually one of the least fucked up among them, which gives him a kind of star attraction, a pedestal upon which he’s never stepped before, as people actually like him for his open-hearted sincerity and endlessly youthful curiosity.  He’s a good kid, but he’s surrounded by people that have only known deadbeats, phonies and bullies.  Sincerity is like from another planet, as it may as well not exist, any more than hope in a prison-like environment where the thought of it can only make you feel worse.  But this perfectly balanced mixture of humor and emotional authenticity is beautifully captured in the dialogue written by the director who not surprisingly himself once worked at a Long Island amusement park.  Kristen Stewart, especially, has become the “it” girl and is especially good as a troubled teen who has to keep everything bottled up inside, where James and his endless monologues about himself actually offer her a way out of her own inner doldrums.  James, she feels, is the last person who would hurt her, and her life has been flattened by people who used her for a door mat.  Stewart is a kind of everywoman, as we’ve all known someone like her, but she’s immensely appealing in the way she keeps struggling to fight her way out.  Eisenberg is youthfully innocent, but he’s given terrific lines, all of which add up to a real surprise, as this film delivers on several different levels, beautifully acted, musically inspiring, well-written with large doses of observational honesty, not the least of which is a wonderfully authentic summer romance set amongst the doom and devastation of near impossible odds, filled with people who have been hurt to the point where this film feels like its carrying the banner of lost causes, where the ultimate goal feels like the resuscitation of lost or otherwise dead souls.  

All 41 Classic 80’s Songs from the Adventureland Soundtrack ...         
Original music for Adventureland by Yo La Tengo

Songs from the trailer:
Song from the commercial:
Song from Kiis FM radio commercial
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Thursday, July 11, 2013

The Way, Way Back














THE WAY, WAY BACK          C+               
USA  (103 mi)  2013  d:  Nat Faxon and Jim Rash

It’s like spring break for adults.         —Susanna (AnnaSophia Robb)

Beware of false advertising when it comes to summer movies, where one of the first out of the block, released over the 4th of July weekend, is THE WAY, WAY BACK, where a plethora of reviews are calling this similar in tone to LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE (2006), but don’t for a second believe it.  While the two films share the same studio, Fox Searchlight, which is trumpeting the dubious connection in their ad campaign, and has two members of the same cast in Steve Carell and Toni Collette, both are a huge disappointment.  This is the same studio, by the way, that sued director Kenneth Lonergan and considered his film 2011 Top Ten Films of the Year #2 Margaret unreleasable, so it sat unseen on the studio shelves for 6 years before releasing the film for a single week, making sure as few people as possible saw the film.  And for those looking for laughs and a feelgood comedy…oops, we’re sorry, but this is a film about the devastating consequences of divorce and adult bullying, where the lives of kids are secondary and get tossed around like leaves in the wind.  What’s missing in this film is any hint of character development, which was the strong suit of MISS SUNSHINE, filled with memorable, and even lovable, characters.  Not so here, as Steve Carell plays the most obnoxious person in the universe, rivaling Ben Stiller in GREENBERG (2010), a loathsome character the audience will simply hate, while Allison Janney plays the second most obnoxious person in the universe, the crazy neighbor next door who constantly has a drink in her hand and whose high-pitched, hysterical laugh can be heard throughout, that insincere kind of laugh that only gets louder as the jokes get less funny.  What these two have in common is their tunnel vision ability to ignore and alienate kids through the absolute worst parenting techniques, where the example they serve is little more than pathetic.  What’s worse, the film uses their infantile behavior for comic laughs, reversing the roles, where it’s the adults who act recklessly and irresponsibly, while most of the children are all much more mature. 

Written by Nat Faxon and Jim Rash, the duo who co-wrote (along with the director) Alexander Payne’s The Descendants (2011), though this was written before that film, where there appear to be two separate stories, the first of which involves the dysfunctional world of adults, where without any back story, a divorced mother Pam (Toni Collette, another troubled woman) and her painfully shy 14-year old son Duncan (Liam James), tag along with her new overbearing boyfriend Trent (Steve Carell), and his typically superficial daughter Steph (Zoe Levin) and head to Trent’s summer house on the beach in Massachusetts.  The title references the position in the car where the anti-social Duncan chooses to sit, in the way, way back of the stationwagon facing in the opposite direction of the other occupants.  When they arrive, Betty (Allison Janney) enthusiastically announces she’s off the wagon and greets them as an alcoholic disaster waiting to happen, while making excuses for the blasé behavior of her own two kids, Susanna (AnnaSophia Robb), a moody teenager a few years older than Duncan, and Peter (River Alexander), the youngest and most ignored kid in the movie, who has a problem with one traveling eye, so his mother continually wants him to wear a patch out of sheer embarrassment.  By the end of the film, however, the kid is adorable.  Another couple joins them, Kip (Rob Corddry), the neighbor with a boat, and his promiscuous wife Joan (Amanda Peet) that Trent continually leers at.  While these adults have backyard barbeque and drinking parties that go on into all hours of the night and morning, occasionally indulging in a little weed as well, buying from one of the neighbor kids, they make Duncan’s life a living hell, especially Trent, who steamrolls him every chance he gets, literally squashing any sense of self-esteem, continually making him feel worthless.  The only worse movie parent that comes to mind is the Reverend Harry Powell (Robert Mitchum) in The Night of the Hunter (1955), and he’s a psychopathic knife-wielding murderer.

If you’re not bored to tears by the first half, where the generic sounding indie music is equally bland, showing no originality whatsoever, usually the staple for these kinds of films, as they’re usually about rebellious individuality, thankfully the film has a second half, where Duncan finds a water park on the other end of town, which may as well be another movie.  While never reaching the sarcastic humor and observational honesty of Adventureland (2009), similarly set in an amusement park, this one includes still more infantile adults, like those working at the park, which includes both writers in amusing roles, and it also includes the co-manager Owen, Sam Rockwell, who is staggeringly hilarious in his role.  Besides being a natural born clown that thrives on doing comedy bits and being the center of attention at an amusement park, causing grief to his more responsible wife Caitlin, Maya Rudolph, the other co-manager who actually has to run things, Owen turns out to be the friend that Duncan has been looking for, offering him a job there for the summer.  Owen literally turns the kid’s life around, placing him in situations where he has to find his way, and then trusting that he’ll succeed, actually giving him a life that he never felt like he had.  Trent only gets worse, twisting the screws of bad taste, while Duncan actually develops a friendship with the pretty girl next door, Susanna, while concealing the job, the developing relationships, and everything else from his family, who were ignoring him anyway except to berate him and boss him around.  While Duncan is the star, he’s only mildly effective in the role, perhaps overly passive, and not all that interesting, while Sam Rockwell steals every scene he’s in, literally altering the focus of the film, becoming the only character worth paying attention to, delivering one of the best performances of his career.  Because Rockwell is so funny, one might overlook the complexity of his growing friendship with Duncan, the way he nurtures the kid and treats him like an adult, even as he has his own personal growing up issues that need to be worked out.  It’s a killer of a performance, one that deserves to be in a better film, which may be why the studio is hyping this film to be more than it is.  In truth, the film raises some unpleasant social issues and then leaves them hanging at the end of the picture, never addressing the reality of what actually matters.    
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