| Overall Grade: |
D- |
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| Story: |
D- |
|
|
| Acting: |
D- |
|
|
| Direction: |
F |
|
|
| Visuals: |
C- |
|
|
Incoherent and meandering
by AFrend (movies profile)
Apr 7, 2009
6
of
8 people found this review helpful
Adventureland marketed itself as a comedy. The film, however, is bland coming-of-age story with un-inspired characters, awkward acting, and incoherent directing.
The movie had potential to be something poignant-the protagonist is recent college graduate forced to take a minimum wage job at a theme park after his family's financial woes wreck his post-collegiate plans. Instead, the protagonist's troubles are drowned out by the numerous, under-developed themes and poor acting.
Kristin Stewart appears to have gone for "perpetually stoned" with her character in mannerism and looks. This decision wears thin after twenty minutes into the movie and left me questioning why the protagonist was even interested in her. As for the other film's characters, I think the film tried to go for quirky, but it falls flat. Instead, the characters' interactions are awkward and stilted. In the hands of more veteran actors, the characters might have had more color. As it is,I feel like I'm watching my old classmates perform scenes from my high school drama class.
As for the story? Well, there isn't much of one aside from painfully recurring themes of boredom, disillusionment, and substance addiction. If any of these elements were supposed to congeal into a meaningful statement, the director clearly forgot to get to it. The movie just meanders from one awkward, pointless scene to the next, never forming a cohesive statment about the film's content or thesis.
And the comedy? Well, the few glimpses of comedy come from physical prat falls like repeated punches to the groin (this little act occurs too many times to count or be funny), pot jokes that we've all heard before, and actor Bill Hader.
Overall, skip this film. |
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