My friend Beth and I went to see Adventureland last night in its last night at the theatre near Union Square. It features Bill Hader, who I have totally seen twice while living in New York, but even without an appearance by one of my very best friends I’ve never actually spoken to, it was a seriously great movie: funny, beautiful, and very touching.
I’m not going to spoil anything for you, but I loved that New York–where I live now–was idling in the background while the characters lived out their lives in the Midwest, where I’m from. Everything they did felt so familiar to me, so college-y and carefree, and I got very nostalgic for those simpler days when I was all idealistic about what I’d make of myself. At the same time, the relationship in it felt so much like what I have now with the good doctor; all of the excitement and the closeness they felt was exactly what I feel with Kamran. There was a point when Kristen Stewart–who is totally great in this movie, for all of you who hated her after Twilight (which I didn’t see but heard horrible things about)–looks at Jesse Eisenberg and says something like, “You’re the coolest boy I’ve ever met. And the cutest.” And I totally made out with Beth at that moment and pretended it was Kamran, because that’s just what I think about him.
ANYWAY, did anyone else see this thing? Am I the only one who liked it?
6 Comments
OK, you convinced me.
I wasn’t going to watch Adventureland because I heard such terrible things about Kristen Stewart in Twilight, but I guess I’ll give her another chance.
(The more I hear about Kristen Stewart and Stephenie Meyer, the more I suspect Stewart’s less-than-stellar performance in Twilight was less a reflection on her acting abilities and more a result of Meyer’s material.)
This is just what Beth told me after the movie. She wasn’t entirely convinced that Kristen was as awesome as I thought she was–she seemed increeeeedibly cool to me and always did the right hand-through-the-hair thing at the right moment–but she thought that most of what made Kristen so awful in Twilight was that the writing was awful.
She compared it to Natalie Portman in Star Wars, if that means anything to you.
I wrote a whole comment to this post last night, and I never showed up. Weird. ANYWAY, since we never got to talk about this movie on the phone, I’ll leave my comments here:
Dan and I loved it, but we saw it with Mike and Melissa, and they were NOT impressed. I think it’s because it wasn’t as overtly funny as the trailer made it seem. I don’t think they like subtlety. Or Lou Reed. Also, Mike was convinced during the entire time that Jesse Eisenberg was actually Michael Cera, and he almost didn’t believe us when we told him otherwise. It’s no wonder Dan and I kick their asses at Scene It.
My favorite part of the movie was that they were post-college instead of post-high school. It’s way more of a “finding yourself” time than when you’re 18 and think you have it all figured out. Kristen Stewart was great, and I already knew I was in love with Jesse, so it was a good time.
Lou Reed was maybe my favourite character in the entire movie. And it’s funny–before we went to the movie I was describing it to everyone as “you know, that new Michael Cera movie”. And everyone was saying, “Ohhhhh, yeah.” Poor Jesse Eisenberg.
Thank god I sometimes match you at Scene It so you can’t use it to pass judgement on me in other friends’ blogs.
I agree about the college part. Because yeah, who DOESN’T have to find himself after high school? But after college, all of these assholes get real jobs and have no ideals and fit right into the corporate world and define themselves by their cars, but not us and Jesse.
Also, I’m afraid you’re going to have to change the e-mail you use on my site unless you NEVER WANT TO GET MY REPLIES E-MAILED TO YOU. Which I’m sure is not the case(?).
I see your replies via comments feed. BUT, I will gladly change e-mail addresses if you would like to do the work to make me a new Gravatar connected to my real address.
Gladly! I’ll be sending you some icon choices momentarily.