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100A sweet, sharp coming-of-age romance, Adventureland is a little warmer, a little funnier and a lot more truthful than the last 20 or 30 of its ilk. Especially its Hollywood ilk.
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91For nostalgia junkies, it's one from the heart.
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91Jesse Eisenberg stars as a kinder, gentler version of the insufferable faux intellectual he played in "The Squid And The Whale."
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91A young adult romantic comedy with a sweetness and delicacy that lifts it out of its genre.
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I've seen Mottola's movie twice, and both times, it has inspired feelings of joy, sadness, and a profound yearning for the unrecoverable past.
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90Has the note-perfect melancholy of a classic young adult novel.
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90Thanks to an exceptionally deft touch, Mottola manages to capture the absurdity and anguish of young adulthood, while never sacrificing meaning on the altar of crude humor.
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88The details are true and funny, played brilliantly.
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88The result is a sharp, insightful, charming motion picture.
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88On the surface, this might look like a typical teen movie, but Adventureland’s talented cast perfectly portrays the self-loathing and strong-minded characters in that transient post-college stage of life.
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88A bittersweet joy. Its humor and romance are refreshing because the writer-director, Greg Mottola, realizes that maturity is a two-steps-forward, one-step-backward process.
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With a keen affection for his own formative years, filmmaker Greg Mottola has crafted a funny and spunky amusement
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80What makes the movie such an unexpectedly potent little number is that Adventureland comes to stand for Stagnationland; the real roller coaster (i.e., life) is just outside the park.
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80Greg Mottola has taken that most overdone of contemporary genres, the coming-of-age story, and made it engaging, bittersweet and even fun.
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80Somehow the story of a young man's coming of age never gets old, at least when it is told with the kind of sweetness and intelligence Adventureland displays.
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80Infinitely charming new romantic comedy.
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78A confident return to the kind of teen comedy that's funny without being raunchy, youthful without being juvenile, and reflective without hitting you over the head.
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75What surprised me was how much I admired Kristen Stewart, who in "Twilight," was playing below her grade level. Here is an actress ready to do important things. Together, and with the others, they make Adventureland more real and more touching than it may sound.
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75Mottola softens his approach, and Adventureland turns out to be more like "Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist" than a Judd Apatow creation.
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75Mixes the intimate, indie vibe of "Daytrippers" with the absurdist screwball streak of "Superbad," to winning effect.
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75This film makes you wonder why aren't there more young love movies?
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75Delightful because it's intensely sincere.
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75Yes, the delight of this movie lies in these devilish details, and it's clear that writer-director Greg Mottola knows them well.
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75Mottola also wrote the screenplay, which is most fresh and honest when dealing with supporting characters.
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75The laughs in Adventureland aren't as outlandish as those in "Superbad," but they seem more based in experience and truth. You could want something more raucous, I suppose, but that wouldn't necessarily be an improvement.
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70Mottola (who also wrote the script) and his actors manage to shape the movie into something whole and tangible, capturing, among other things, the shapeless listlessness of summer, especially at that age when you're technically an adult and yet you're left waiting for life to begin.
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70A rather ordinary account of youthful summer misadventures that goes down easily thanks to a sparky cast, more than 40 pop tunes that anchor the action in the late '80s and characters who get high both on and off their jobs at a tacky amusement park.
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70Funny, smart, and complacent.
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63Adventureland throws a lot at us, but not enough of it sticks.
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63Mottola, who wrote and directed 1996's "The Daytrippers," crafts smart, witty dialogue. But the movie suffers in tone. While much of the story feels like a brainier John Hughes comedy, it veers into more dramatic terrain and loses focus.
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60Adventureland has the structure of a Tilt-a-Whirl ride: It goes where you expect, and may fill you with dread.
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60What separates Adventureland from something like "Garden State" is a commitment to realism and plausibility. In fact, at times, it is almost too realistic given the location's inherent value as a comic prop. For a film set primarily in an amusement park, it isn't terribly amusing.
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60There's no shortage of felicitous lines or interesting performances, yet the movie, like the amusement park of its title, feels constructed from familiar parts.
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50Harmless enough, but "indie comedy" sounds like something better seen at Urban Outfitters than at a movie theater.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 57 out of 81
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Mixed: 10 out of 81
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Negative: 14 out of 81
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