Adventureland (2009)

I've read a lot of terrible movie scripts in my life. Let's face it, when you're in the independent movie scene, this sort of thing comes up a lot. It's sad to see a person write a movie script where they obviously care about the main characters so much, but in no way think of a way to make the characters likeable for other people. Don't get me wrong, I support the idea of making movies for yourself, but if you are doing that, it's important to know you are doing that. If a movie is written with the intent of being enjoyed by many, but your characters are never likeable, or interesting, or even realistic, chances are your movie isn't gonna get made, because you the writer are the only person with passion for the project. Unfortunately, Adventureland is an exception to this rule. 

I want to first say, I wasn't expecting a comedy out of this movie. I know the trailer tried to make it out as one, but I'd heard that it wasn't a funny movie at all, just that it was pretty good. I heard half right.

Somehow we have a pretty great cast, pinned down by some ham fisted writing. At every turn there is a contrivance that severely takes you out of story you're seeing. I'm not even gonna go into the acting as there is no point. Everyone in this movie, plays the role they always play. Jesse Eisenberg, is exactly the guy from Social Network, Kristen Wiig is what she always is, Bill Hader is what he always is and Ryan Reynolds is exactly what he always is. Oh and Kristen Stewart, remains a shining image of why having a mother who is a hollywood casting director, is very useful. She has one facial expression, and everyone knows it so that's all I've got to say about her.

At the end of the day, this movie was just not interesting. The characters mean nothing to me the viewer, and thus when we get to the "climax", where everyone up to this point has been a terrible person, I'm supposed to be cheering for two actors, who don't have any connection, to get together. This is your big climax! This movie had me very close to shutting it off for a long time, but I'm a strong believer that if you don't see how the movie plays out, you have no right to call it a terrible movie. I finished it and can say with clear conscience that this movie is TERRIBLE. I'd even go as far as to say it's the worst movie I've seen since, I dunno, Transformers.

The biggest shock is that this is written and directed by the same guy (Which isn't a surprise, especially since no one else would have any passion to direct this terrible script) who directed Superbad. The difference, is that Superbad was written by someone else, who understood the value of likeable characters. This movie was a few rewrites away from being watchable, but at the end of the day, it still had no purpose. It tries to trick us into thinking it's good but using the 80s atmosphere, but even then, it just doesn't work. If there is one thing I learned from this movie too, it's that New York is a very very small city. You can literally hop off of a bus and run into the person you're looking for within 10 minutes of arriving. Gotta love that.

In closing. Save the cat. If you are writing a script and don't know what that means, it's time to look into it. 

UPDATE: I actually wrote this a few days ago. Since then I went on IMDB and noticed this had a 7.1/10. I couldn't help but wonder what the hell people were thinking and when reading a few reviews and comments on the message boards I learned that most people praise this movie for having natural dialogue that is witty and funny. I have also noticed that people genuinely are concerned about the relationship of these extremely unlikeable characters. I'm amazed by this, really, I am. Honestly, some people are blessed with the gift of liking any random character you throw in front of them on the screen. This is why I believe Transformers has been so successful, as Shia's character never does anything likeable in the least but people still pull for him. But that is something for me to touch on another day. Perhaps a day when I feel like having an aneurism.