Adventureland

Saw Adventureland, a teenage romance which is I guess also a coming of age film. It follows some dude from a rich family that has fallen into some nebulously defined hard times and who now must slum it at a local amusement park for cash. There he meets the requisite wacky oddballs who range from the annoying to the amusing. There's a Russian studies major who describes himself as a pragmatic atheist who is great.

The protagonist falls into cutesy love with the resident cool girl. She's capital-m Messed Up (but also from a rich family) and drinks, sleeps with older men, and is reeling from the recent death of her mother. The older man is clearly a sleazeball who has manipulated this girl into sleeping with him. I can't really remember if the girl and the protagonist are supposed to be post-high-school or post-college age. Everyone lives with their parents but then most of my post-college friends did as well. Everyone drinks and smokes a lot and they don't get in any trouble for it. Then again they act like teenagers often do in films, the way 20-somethings actually act in real life. I like to imagine they're 20-something because this hews closer to my life.

Anyway, this is a very cuddly film. There's light humor throughout to keep things fun. Unfortunately a great deal comes from the protagonist's heinous, nut-punching friend Frigo, but the ringleaders of the amusement park are SNL vets and are great fun to watch. The film is set in the 80s and is just soaked in glorious early 80s nostalgia. The romantic scenes between the idiot protagonist and the cool girl are adorable and sweet, well observed and acted. There's a fair bit of gross gender politics involved with the girl and the protagonist, but nothing worse than the usual romantic comedy and to its credit, the film does call out the even-worse gender bullshit of the other characters. The film is sweet and nerdy, bitter but romantic. I feel like in ten year's time, the world may have caught up with the main characters, wrecking their childhoods and turning them scarred and bitter adults, but for now they are unformed, and young, and full of promise. A cute little film.