Written and directed by Greg Mottola (“Superbad”), “Adventureland” is a semi- autobiographical coming-of-age tale that will likely find resonance with Wesleyan students. James (Jesse Eisenberg), a recent graduate of another liberal arts college, Oberlin, finds at the start of the film that his parents no longer have the money to fund either a summer trip to Europe or graduate school at Columbia University. Back at home for the summer, he finds that the only position his Comparative Literature and Renaissance Studies double major has qualified him for is a job as a “Games” man at a local theme park. Biding his time at “Adventureland” in the hopes of saving up for graduate school, his anxieties and concerns for the future are visualized with the aid of soft, romantic lighting and a very mellow film score, provided by indie band Yo La Tengo. As a portrait of the artist Greg Mottola as a young man, the film asks critical questions of young people: what kind of education does an artist need and what kind of experiences fuel art production? And finally, how does one go about making a living while waiting for one’s life to start? 

Set in 1987 Pittsburgh, the film depicts a series of episodes that take place on or underneath the city’s iconic Andy Warhol Bridge—a handy way of reminding us that “The Steel City” was once home to another artist whose work demonstrated that art and “art moments” could be culled from unlikely places. In this film’s case, it is the crassly commercial Adventureland that is posited as an artistic landscape, one in which the camera continually finds beauty. Under the influence of drugs, Adventureland’s workers also experience the theme park as a magical site, and are cast in a daze by its garish patterns of colored lights and steady, vigorous rhythms of the rides. Unlike at college (where he was revealed to be mostly socially awkward), James is quickly included in Adventureland’s social scene, forming particularly close relationships with fellow games operators Joel (Martin Starr) and Em (Kristen Stewart), also hyper-literate youths and potential artists slumming at the park for the summer. 

In addition to these lovably pretentious misfits are the would-be popular kids at the park whose attractiveness and charisma have secured them the more coveted positions as officiators of the theme park’s rides. These hierarchies, however, prove to be less rigid than they were in high school and James soon finds admittance to both crowds, using as his passport his continual supply of joints, a graduation gift from a wealthy former classmate. Having left college a virgin, he is surprised to find romantic offers not only from Em, but from Lisa P. (Margarita Levieva), the park’s teenage queen, who dances seductively and, at times, almost violently in front of the rides she runs. Not surprisingly though, it is Em who James truly connects with and falls for, a girl who has her own family and romantic drama to cope with. This attention to the interior life of the love interest distinguishes “Adventureland” from many male-centered coming-of-age dramas, including Motolla’s own “Superbad,” which is more interested in the formation of homosocial bonds than mature romantic couplings. 

Em, doubly troubled by her frustrating home life and a secret relationship with married park maintenance man Connell (Ryan Reynolds), is initially confused by James’ idealistic overtures as this sincere approach is so counter to Connell’s own maneuverings. Connell (Ryan Reynolds), an aging, manipulative rock star whose social calling card is a fictional, mythical encounter with Lou Reed, initially functions as a sort of role model to James who also claims Reed as a cultural hero. It takes James’ discovery of the affair to outgrow Connell’s influence, at which point he realizes that Em is not a woman to be managed or duped, and that Connell is not the kind of artist he would like to be someday. Though Em screwed up, James is no saint either, which he demonstrates by getting plastered and damaging a neighbor’s car, thereby losing all of the money he earned at Adventureland.  

Conferencing with Joel in the backyard of his suburban home at the end of the summer, the two young intellectuals reckon with their future as artists. Joel, more cynical than James, points to Herman Melville, an author with a tragic personal life whose name was printed incorrectly (as Henry) in his obituary. James counters Joel’s logic with his own belief that Melville was “a passionate guy,” seeing this state of being as more important than how he was remembered publicly. This epiphany leads him to take a bus to New York City, to share his lot with other artistic youths, but most importantly to rejoin Em who is a student at NYU. Finding James in the rain, Em is surprised that she’ll be forgiven, just as James is amazed that he too will be taken in. Undressing each other in her cramped apartment, the film ends with a reunion that is wondrously hopeful, while remaining realistic, imbued as it is with the personal struggles and shortcomings of these two characters. It is this bittersweet tone that makes Adventureland a gem in the romantic-comedy landscape that has lately been ruled by what has lately been termed “Apatown,” a filmic universe Mottola as a director belongs to, and yet a vision he nevertheless manages to subvert with this film.