Adventureland

June 20, 2010 - A recent college graduate spends the summer of '87 smoking pot and working at an amusement park in Pittsburgh. Jesse Eisenberg (Zombieland) and Kristen Stewart (from the Twilight movies) star. Wendy Malik and Ryan Reynolds also appear.

Eisneberg plays James, a sensitive young man who plans to go to grad school at Columbia in the fall so he can be a travel writer in the Dickensian style. But, his father gets a demotion at work, so James must find a summer job to pay for said grad school. The only job he can find is as a games operator at Adventureland, the hometown amusement park.

That's where James meets Emily, a fellow games operator. She's home for the summer from NYU and is rebelling against her lawyer father and her stepmother. One aspect of her rebellion is an affair with Connell (Reynolds), the married maintenance guy at the park.

Overall review: *** This is a neat little film that does well to capture the emotional and social complexities of young adulthood. Stewart, I think, does especially well with her role. A soundtrack featuring the likes of INXS, Falco, Crowded House, Lou Reed, Wang Chung and Whitesnake doesn't hurt, either.