Greg Matolla, USA, 2009, 107 min.

I haven’t had this much fun in a movie theatre since I got an ex-girlfriend to reinact a particular line of Alanis Morissette’s breakout hit You Oughta Know with me while watching The X-Files Movie in 1998!

Ok, ok, that’s probably taking it quite a bit too far.  Still, Adventureland is a  surprisingly refreshing look into the confusing and often hilarious world of post-college love and shitty summer jobs.  It’s an exploration into the  life of James Brennan (Jesse Eisenberg), a recent college graduate who must work at an amusement park so he can save money to attend graduate school at Columbia.  A quirky cast of characters helps James navigate through the confusing terrain and find love in Emily (Kristen Stewart), a rebellious NYU college student.  Adventureland deals heavily in the themes of love, jealousy, confusion, regret and nut-punching.  I haven’t witnessed so many brutal nut-punches administered since I roamed the halls of Jonas Salk Middle School in 8th grade and the infamous cock-knocking incident of 1994.  It was glorious and breath-taking!

A warning: anyone going to see Adventureland and expecting a rehash of Greg Matolla’s work in Superbad is bound to be at least momentarily confused, if not downright disappointed.  Adventureland is a far more serious film and, though far from a Dramedy, is not the straight and mindless comedy people are likely to expect. Although there is a seemingly endless cavalcade of genital slams and other elements of sophomoric humor, these moments are brief and fleeting.  Though the film is still funny, it centers more on the complex and awkward relationships between the characters, making it a far superior and more complete film than Superbad.

Adventureland isn’t the frat-boy comedy most people are probably expecting it to be.  It’s better.  Hiding behind all the dick-and-fart jokes and the occasional punch to the nuts is a film that’s trying to say something.  What it’s saying is “see me, you won’t be disappointed.”

John Hamburg, USA, 105 min.

I wanted to love you, I Love You, Man.  Really, I did.  I tried.  I tried so hard to love you, but you gave me no choice.  I think I should see other films.  I’m sorry.  It’s not me, it’s you.

No, please.  Please don’t cry.  It’s nothing you did.  It’s what you didn’t do.  You told me this story about a guy named Peter Klaven (Paul Rudd) who, upon becoming engaged and starting to plan his wedding, realizes that he has spent his whole life focusing on his relationships with women.  This has left him with no male friends to speak of.  He decides to go on a series of “man dates” to rectify the situation.  After a series of slighty humorous mishaps, Peter meets the man-friend of his dreams in Sydney Fife (Jason Segel), a cougar hunting day trader.  Peter develops doubts about his upcoming marriage as his friendship with Sydney grows. His fiancee (played by Rashida Jones….soooooo hot!) becomes jealous of and a bit concerned about his blossoming male relationship.  Friction engulfs both relationships and that’s just about the whole movie.

You were amusing in parts, don’t get me wrong, but your humor only focused on the slightly homoerotic relationship developing between Peter and Sydney.  It was good for a laugh or two, but it inevitably became less funny and predictable.

Otherwise, you really gave no effort.  Paul Rudd did a decent job, but Peter Klaven might have been the weakest lead character I’ve ever seen in a film.  Sydney Fife was a bit more fun to watch, but ultimately neither character was very well-written.  There was no journey of character development, you just showed me a series of events and then ended.

You just seemed so rushed, I Love You, Man. You were the classic case of a studio trying to piggyback the recent success of films like The 40 Year Old Virgin, Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Knocked Up by putting familiar actors together with a relatively humorous script and throwing a movie together.  You just came up short.  You weren’t horrible, you just weren’t anything.  It’s time we said goodbye.  I’m sure there are people out there waiting to see you who will love you for the unspectacular, uninspired and predictible comedy you are.  Find them, I Love You, Man.  Fly Free.

Well, after a long and terrible layoff due to TCs inability to type coherently, the boys at ReelFriction are back and ready to give it to you harder and faster than ever before!  Stay tuned for an exciting first update….a Head 2 Head no less!

And hopefully, Mavis Beacon can help TC fix all of his typing issues so you, our faithful reader,  never have to suffer through a drought like that again…