Adventureland

Sometimes it just doesn’t work. For me, I mean. This film was well-reviewed (75% at Metacritic), and I read some of the best ones, and kept nodding. Yes, they’re all pretty much right. The writing was good, the acting was good, this was not your run-of-the-mill coming-of-age film … and yet it never engaged me. Jesse Eisenberg is getting almost as tiresome as Hugh Grant with his awkward, hesitant, inept-with-women schtick. Worked for me in Zombieland, didn’t work in Adventureland (and what’s with the –land stuff? What’s next? Jesseland?). I hope I don’t have to see the schtick again, I hope he finds a new schtick. There was a lot of music which I found mostly intrusive. I kept comparing it to another coming-of-age film with a lot of music, The Graduate, and it kept coming up short. Way short. Now, you can feel free to chalk all this up to a grumpy old 62-year-old unable to appreciate the attractions of a film about young people … and you may very well be right.