Adventureland

I was hooked on this trailer for Greg Motolla's follow-up film to Superbad about 10 seconds in due to the announcer saying "Life after college is not exactly what James expected." Being a recent college graduate in the job market is a scary, shitty thing. James, like many of us lost post-liberal arts grads, takes a day job. However, instead of serving food, he works at an amuzement park. This sounds compelling enough (a movie about bullshit day jobs becomes a film about what it means to grow up) as well as easy to connect to (how many of us post-college kids needed our degrees to get us our current positions?). Sounds promising right?

Sadly, the trailer isn't very funny and the gags it sets up (a boner at a swimming pool party, drinking behind the horse racing booth, inappropriately refrigerated corn dogs) aren't as clever as you would like them to be. It's the story that kept me interested and the questions it brought up about the film. What does this say about the stigma of working a day job? What will end up happening to James and his career choices? Will this be cathartic for me? 

The shots in this trailer are very bright and hopeful (which makes sense seeing that it's set in an Amusement Park) so we're not looking at a "downer" here. Even the "gross" parts are complemented by Ryan Reyolds shining face bearing some prophetic wisdom. This shouldn't seem like a problem until you think about Superbad. Superbad had a grittiness to it that seems to be lacking in Adventureland. Part of what made Superbad so great was its horrifying reality. While Adventureland presents itself this way, the trailer doesn't have that sense of vunerability. This shift may, in part, be due to the fact that Judd Apatow's name is nowhere on this movie. The lack of his name, and I truly do mean this, is actually something to make one skeptical. 

All that said, I will see this movie, most likely in the theatres. However, Motolla's name probably would have lead me there whether or not I watched the preview.