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The director of Superbad returns with a new film, based on his first script since The Daytrippers. The script has been getting a lot of buzz for the past little while, and now the trailer (along with lots info about the film) can be seen here.

This is easily my most anticipated film of next year. The Daytrippers was fascinating, Superbad was pitch-perfect, and I am looking forward to seeing how this one turns out, especially with Hader and Wiig in the supporting cast.

I really didn't enjoy this trailer. It reminded me more of Sex Drive than it should. I like a lot of the people involved in the movie (Wiig in particular) but it really does seem like a bunch of movies bunched into one. You've got the nerd comedy with bullies picking on Starr, you've got the Will Ferrell nonsense = humor thing from Bill Hader ("Don't eat the corndogs!" should not be considered a joke), you've got Ryan Reynolds from a Ryan Reynolds movie doing the Ryan Reynolds dry line delivery + wandering eyeball roll, you've got at least one person acting like Juno, etc. Hader and Wiig might as well be the cops from Superbad.

I'm not going to write it off until I see it, but if I saw that trailer in the theater I would've forgotten about it by the end of the movie.

Red band trailer.

I saw a cut of this film last spring or summer and the trailer doesn't do it any justice. That being said, I didn't particularly like the film (and I was a fan of both The Daytrippers and Superbad). At the time I saw it, the film couldn't really decide on a tone and it ended up feeling like characters wandering through several different movies while giving lame thoughts on coming of age with all the jokes and "poignant" moments falling flat.

The release date has been pushed to April 3rd.

cinemartin wrote:At the time I saw it, the film couldn't really decide on a tone and it ended up feeling like characters wandering through several different movies while giving lame thoughts on coming of age with all the jokes and "poignant" moments falling flat.

Saw a screening tonight, and the problems with tone are still present. Watching the film, you actually get an appreciation of how good the script of Superbad actually was in balancing its humor with its more poignant moments. Mottola's script is all over the place trying to mix broad comedy (a running gag involves someone getting punched in the groin repeatedly) with a poorly conceived love triangle. The poor editing only highlights the film's weaknesses as scenes cut haphazardly from comedy to sober drama with little rhyme or reason. Finally, the film's final sequence feels like an afterthought (and perhaps written at studio insistence) providing a pat, "happy" ending where an open one would've felt much more real.

I really wanted to like this but it was a disappointment. That said, the highlights that were there included the underutilized Bill Hader and Kristin Wiig, and Martin Starr gets a nice role in a more grown up version of his character from Freaks & Geeks.

love daytrippers, but boy do i hate superbad.

my wife is trying to get me to see this. yo la tengo did the soundtrack, which is a plus in my book.

still deciding...

I caught this last night and enjoyed it very much. It was low key, languid, and almost humble in a way, and I thought the main characters were very thoughtfully realized. I can see what those above are saying about the film's unevenness: I found the first half of the film to progress very naturally in both tone and plot, but towards the end certain developments seemed to be a bit contrived so as to create "necessary" drama. And although the ending put a smile on my face, I would've preferred a more realistic finish, too. Its certainly far from perfect, but I wasn't bothered by the film's faults.

My biggest reason for seeing the movie in the first place was the promised hilarity of Wiig & Hader (and they were great!) but what I came away appreciating the most was the quieter, wistful nature of the film, watching James meander around through his last summer as a (relatively) carefree youth and coming to terms with setbacks in love and with future plans. The movie resonated well with me. And for what its worth, I think that Kristen Stewart is a fantastic and engaging actress and I hope to see her in more movies. Can't bring myself to take in Twilight, but I really liked her here.

And of course it goes without saying that the soundtrack was amazing.

Once again, LQ beats me to the punch and saves me a couple of paragraphs.

I loved this, it surpassed Superbad and Dazed and Confused for me in the hyper-true-to-life coming of age genre.

I have to agree about Kristen Stewart, too; there's something so un-glamorous about her that really sold me on her performance more than I'd expected.

Jesse Eisenberg was fantastic in The Squid and the Whale, but he was very difficult to like. This character was a lot easier to root for, and he was able to be very charming (and thankfully didn't turn his awkwardness up to 11 and just do a Cera impersonation for 2 hours). Outside of him, the film was perfectly cast (right down to the Todd Solondz look-alike who played the gynecologist in Teeth). Martin Starr is one of the most engaging young actors in the world, and it's great to see him getting a role outside of a stock stoner friend in another Apatow production.

You definitely owe it to yourself to see this for the large doses of nostalgia, the great cast, and the production design. And of course, the soundtrack will be in high demand (and the fact that it doesn't seem to be available on Amazon right now is leading me to believe that it'll be rushed out to stores ASAP after people go to see this).

I'm glad to read that several people here liked Daytrippers, which I hadn't seen anyone else on the forum mention before. I'd like to hope that if Adventureland does well we might get a non-pan-and-scanned DVD of Daytrippers, but if that didn't happen after Superbad most likely it's not going to happen now.

AV Club interview with Greg Mottola.

Excellent film, except for the ending. I was expecting a garden-variety Apatow thing. It isn't, which is probably why it is bombing at the B.O. Great low-key perfs all around (Ryan Reynolds excepted, arguably).

I am in complete accord with the praise regarding this film. This is one of the few films in the past few years that have truly resonated with me and that I could relate to on a deeply personal level. I have not been able to get this film out of my head. It is unfortunate that Superbad was such a dud.

It's been mentioned already, but I have to agree, this features quite possibly the greatest soundtrack ever. Combine that with Kristen Stewart and something easy to relate to and you have a movie that I personally can't not like.

Excellent movie. I know it's still early in the year, but this is one I could being my favorite from this year.

Pre-order Yo La Tengo's new album from Matador and get an LP of their Adventureland score

Watched this last night. I gotta say I was pleased overall. It's unfortunate that the studio totally mishandled the film.
I do agree with Antoine Doinel's post that the ending seems a bit tacked on, but overall pretty decent.

Never got a cinema release in Australia.

From all that I've read, both here and from trustworthy reviews, I'm almost tempted to blind-buy.

I don't have enough Sunday night-looking for something easy to watch-type films.

Everyone keeps talking about the studio mishandling the film - this is a pretty low-key picture... do you really think as many people would have gone to see it were the ads not a bit misleading? I know it didn't make a whole lot of money, but I think it would have made far less in a more arthouse-scale release if the studio weren't able to spin it as the next raucous R-rated comedy from the director of Superbad. And it wasn't like the ads were over-the-top American Pie DTV sequel bad. I don't really have a problem with the way the studio advertised the film.

bdsweeney wrote:Never got a cinema release in Australia.

It did, actually. Confined to a couple of times a day in a few multiplexes, lasted about two weeks.
I was busy at the time and missed it.

Spoilers:

This turned up on the television last night, so I gave it a watch and ended up being very pleasantly surprised by the quality of this film. Yes it contains a few silly gross out gags (though they get confined to one 'dumb younger brother' character!) and some contrived situations (mostly the big third act fight, separation and drunken car crash) but there is an obvious understanding and care taken with all of the characters in the film and the best moments are the smallest ones (such as the first time I think that I've ever seen Kristen Stewart smile in a film!)

This is the kind of film that a trials of life, teen romance-drama like The Perks of Being A Wallflower wishes it could be (though it helps that Adventureland doesn't have a hideous 'growth through repressed child abuse' subplot!) - small scale, tiny moments that might not mean a lot in the big scheme of things but are the stuff that life is made up of. Boring summer jobs in which people come and go constantly, silly but harmful gossip and parents almost dropping entirely out of the picture until they reappear to lay down the law in the final act (there is also a strange matching pair of domineering and outraged mothers, or step-mothers with a cowed, weary father sitting quietly next to them!). Also the film has a wisdom about it in the knowledge that people don't really grow or change too much in big leaps but kind of reach 'breaking points' where they have to change or be crushed by life.

An aspect that I particularly liked about the film was in the scene where a couple of stereotypical frat boys get upset when they find out the fairground games are fixed, which leads to a fight and our main character getting chased through the park, eventually seeking help in the Manager's office. The Manager himself then goes out and threatens the abusive customer with a, readily to hand for such occasions, baseball bat! It is obviously over the top but I think it is part of what makes the film quite touching in its portrayal of the management too, in the sense that all the rules are laid down by the bosses to their (part-time, casual labour, teenage) employees about the obvious importance of treating customers with respect and the unwritten policy never to allow anyone to win the "giant-ass panda bear" toy, but when exactly those things inevitably happen in the course of things they are not treated as a shocking breaking of the rules (though beforehand they get built up that way) but instead the employee is given support by both managers and co-workers. Even if the managers have to not endorse that kind of thing happening routinely and the co-workers make jokes like "That giant-ass panda isn't worth getting knifed over...but it's still a shame you are going to get fired on your first day!"

I also love the briefly sketched in relationship of the couple managing the park in the scenes in which they appear! They both know the running of the games, the drills and the patter off by heart, but the film doesn't sneer at that or the characters themselves for being sad and pathetic because of that (something that I could see being a big temptation for a film going for easy, broad comedy laughs). Instead, in a generous way, the film feels as if it is celebrating the fulfilment that the couple are both getting from running the park and sharing the tasks involved together. They're both doing what they love with the one they love.

Yet, having said all that, it also feels as if the film is not afraid to slightly critique that laissez faire approach to management and attitude towards the employees. Not just in the easy come-easy go attitude to summer workers but particularly in that subplot of the guy in his mid-30s working at the park who is much older than the rest of the teens and who appears to be picking out a girl from the yearly rotation crop of new recruit teens to commit adultery on his wife with (the character played by Ryan Reynolds in perhaps the one non-annoying role that I've seen him in so far! Though it is a role tailor-made for a cad! And his part feels very reminiscent of Matthew McConaughey's character in Dazed and Confused stuck at school getting older while the college girls stay the same age).

This is what the romantic-drama final section of the film hinges around, but I think that just as important as the break up and reconcilliation between our two leads, it is important to see the way that Reynolds's character is allowed, and even enabled, to function by his Adventureland job. Tellingly I think that we never see anything of Reynolds's wife (if I had a criticism of this film, it is the sense that the older women in relationships, from mothers to wives, are a bit too one-dimensional. Though that might be because of the film taking a teenage point of view of the world. Plus, as mentioned above, Kristen Wiig's co-manager character contrasts against that), whether she knows about the current, or previous, affairs (Mike says that he has told her and they had a big row over what he did, but this is at a point in the film where we shouldn't be believing anything he says), or whether even she has perhaps even accepted this casual Summer fling thing that he has going on as just being something that happens. That whole subplot might be contrived on the main level of breaking our lead characters up in preparation for a big reconcilliation, but I liked that the smaller parts of that adultery subplot didn't shy away from some more complicated material.

Anyway, I'm liking the film even more thinking about it over the last day. I'd even also disagree slightly with Antoine Doinel about the running gag about someone getting punched in the groin being out of place. I'd even go so far as to say it was relatively restrained, with the two punch to the groin scenes in some ways 'bookending' the coming of age tale in a nice way! They are thematically appropriate, emotionally satisfying punches to the groins, if you like!