Adventureland

I know in my heart that man is good. That what is right will always eventually triumph. And there's purpose and worth to each and every life.

Every promise, every opportunity is still golden in this land. And through that golden door our children can walk into tomorrow with the knowledge that no one can be denied the promise that is America.

                                                                            - Ronald Reagan

Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth...

                                                                            - Ecclesiastes 11:9

It's interesting to look back now and reflect on how much promises like that turned to shit in the decade we now recognize as '80s America. A formative time for me, and the death of possibility that I once envisioned for myself and this nation. We were at a cusp in our history, leaning one way or another in the grand scheme of things. I, through friends and the lingering optimism of a then dying counterculture, believed times were still alterable. That America could become a generous people and fulfill its destiny as a great nation.

In a mere six years after Watergate, the shame and ignominy of Nixon was forgotten and we decided to embrace our dark side. We have not recovered to this day. I watched as John Lennon was killed. Reagan was elected and then shot by the son of a Bush family ally (it's true). Ollie North ran roughshod over the Constitution with a complicit White House and Ed Meese released his horseshit pornography report. Social programs were stripped. Deregulation became policy. The arts were defunded and condemned. Religion and its craziness became resurgent. The environment was shat upon and the Bush political legacy took true form. We became a nation of jailers. The hope died then, washed red with the blood of the working man and middle class, and its demise ushered in the new greed posturing that would take over American thought and influence. We decided to drop our ideals of liberty and fair play (both at home and abroad) to appease the more selfish, belligerent and dogmatic aspects of our soul. A move which has bankrupted us as a nation (financially and spiritually) and left us flailing for identity, worth and cause.

Adventureland, the latest from writer/director Greg Mottola, speaks subtly of it. He is more interested in capturing the uncertainty of the time in the male/female relationships of the youths who went through those growing pains and ended up equally bankrupted through sexual angst, career/educational defeatism and utter philosophical confusion. They were promised something (the American Dream?) that could never really be delivered.

They wanted an escape from the crippling normalcy. And it often took the form of dope, fast music and a hatred for "selling out" to corporate interests.

That desire turned into a harsh comeuppance for those without the cutthroat mentality to chop their fellow countrymen off at the heels for a dollar. The fear of becoming a ridiculous caricature of one's parents was very real. Many got lost along the wayside. Others adapted as best they could in social work or education. Most joined the ranks of the reproducers and settled down despite themselves. But there were no real communities any longer.

There's a reason Mottola opens his film with the angry, throaty admonitions of Paul Westerberg and The Replacements:

The ones who love us best are the ones we'll lay to rest
And visit their graves on holidays at best
The ones who love us least, are the ones we'll die to please
If it's any consolation, I don't begin to understand them

That was my time. So I'm a little more nostalgic and in tune with the film's nuances than most. Mottola and I are the same age and remember things quite similarly. He was from the northeast, as was I. He was a stoner, as was I. He had shitty summer jobs gathering money for college, as did I. He watched promises fold. He saw dreams unraveling.

The essential difference between my existence in those days and the image of it he portrays is that it was a lot more uninteresting on my end. Richard Linklater's Dazed and Confused and Slacker better captures this ennui. But, hell, that's why we make films celebrating the "good old days".

In fact, Mottola nails that reality so often I found myself tapping my foot to the music of my youth and recognizing, in more than a few instances, a composite character (or their adolescent actions) reminding me of some jackass I knew back in the time.

And there was always that creepy older predator (Ryan Reynolds in this case) who lingered around (and nailed) the girls I wanted.

Other glaring differences from Aventureland and my tender years is the fact that I never remotely got a chance to fuck a chick as hot as Kristen Stewart (there weren't any in those days) and my friends did not hand me free bags of weed before whisking away to Europe for the summer. Oh yeah, and my parents would not only have taken my summer earnings for crashing the family car while drunk, but would have called the authorities and placed me in jail.

Details be damned. The film works because the characters are true. The actors sell it. And the '80s are a fresh time to recall and exploit. The '70s seem so yesterday, don't they?

There is everything here. Many Lou Reed songs (big among the hipsters then), dumb, lip-glossed hotties into Madonna, rampant weed smoking, pretentious shits quoting Virgil to impress god knows who, bad dancers at lousy pseudo-hip clubs with too little cocaine and even less coordination, women with extremely gaudy makeup and big hair thinking they are far hotter than they are, seedy bars with INXS (???) on the jukebox, people fucking bareback with AIDS in the periphery, and the timeless bevy of nerds, wannabes, derelicts and hangers-on that typify the sadness of the human condition when MTV was hot and reality programming was the latest un-filmed argument about the length of my hair at the family dinner table.

Adventureland is all of that.

Sure, Jesse Eisenberg (The Squid and the Whale) could have branched out from the nebbishy "everykid" already perfected and overplayed by Michael Cera. Kirsten Stewart could try eliciting an emotion without using her hair. But the essence is pure. The story is about two young adults in love and the necessary weirdness involved in such endeavors at that age. And the soundtrack is spot on. The Cure to bumper car fun? C'mon!

My one gripe? The age was strange. I kept getting a high school vibe from these kids. The film claimed they were college grads. I don't remember being that nervous or needy at 22.

Then again, I could be getting older. My memory ain't what it used to be.

***Check out Mottola's first film, The Daytrippers. Much headier and more enjoyable for the adult in all of us. He may be the lone writer/director who has benefited from Judd Apatow's largess and not been poisoned by fart humor.