Adven­ture­land

This is the pas­sion project that Greg Mot­to­la put on the back­burn­er when Judd Apatow’s Hol­ly­wood laugh machine came call­ing with the chance to direct Super­bad. So how do you fol­low a thigh-slap­ping, gag-hap­py behe­moth? With a quirky, sen­si­tive and beau­ti­ful­ly played rom-com, it seems.

Adven­ture­land is set in a pas­tel-shad­ed ​’80s where a mot­ley crew of pot-heads, geeks and bub­ble-gum blow­ing babes strug­gle through sum­mer in Pitts­burgh as carnies run­ning the booths at an old-school amuse­ment park. Man­aged by a com­i­cal­ly ram­pant Bill Had­er (Seth Rogen’s bungling cop part­ner in Super­bad) who rules the park with an iron fist – ​“We pay Malaysian kids 10 cents a day to make these prizes. We can’t just give them away!” – a rick­ety roller coast­er and hash-cook­ie-fuelled dodgem dri­ving form the back­drop to a wast­ed sum­mer for Jesse Eisenberg’s James.

It’s a sum­mer that Mot­to­la expe­ri­enced first-hand, and with a sound­track fea­tur­ing the likes of Falco’s ​‘Rock Me Amadeus’ we’re trans­port­ed to a ver­sion of the ​’80s that recalls the styling of Don­nie Darko. Whether or not you’re a child of the decade that gave us cheesy pop and an actor in the White House, this movie will strike a chord with any­one who’s done a crap­py job that end­ed up being the best time of their life.

Com­pared to the cold des­o­la­tion of actu­al ​’80s rites of pas­sage movies like the drug-fuelled adap­ta­tion of Bret Eas­t­on Ellis’ ​‘Less Than Zero’, it is, despite its occa­sion­al Super­bad-ness – ​“You got­ta show me some muff!” – a misty-eyed view of a young man’s yearn­ing for life away from a small town.

Ryan Reynolds turns up in an unlike­ly cameo as the theme park lothario who’s a clas­sic big fish in a small pond. He uses the boast that he once jammed with Lou Reed to snare Twilight’s Kris­ten Stew­art. James has fall­en for her in a big way, while Reynolds dish­es out rela­tion­ship advice to fur­ther con­fuse the love-struck youth: ​“We’re men. We’re wired to meet our needs.”

It’s here that Mot­to­la keeps two plates spin­ning. On the one hand we have a retro cool com­e­dy with big hair and smut­ty one-lin­ers – ​“Stroke it into a tube sock and eat my dick cheese!” – and on the oth­er a curi­ous love tri­an­gle that speaks of Reynolds bro­ken dreams (a washed up repair­man at an amuse­ment park cling­ing to youth­ful ambi­tions) and Eisenberg’s dilem­ma – whether to fol­low his heart or his manhood.

Like all films that strike a chord, you’ll find your­self replay­ing your own mem­o­ries as the cred­its roll on a com­e­dy that fires the heart.