While watching this movie, it wasn't clear if this was supposed to be a comedy or a drama, so it's difficult to put this into a category. It was funny and sad, so I'd classify it as a comedy/drama.

The movie takes place in the 1980's and the main character is forced to take a job a Pittsburgh area amusement park called "Adventureland" so he can save enough money to attend graduate school. While his parents feel the job is beneath his college degree qualifications, it's the only job he can find so he takes it, and ends up working the game show booths. While working there, he meets Kristen Stewart, and they develop a romantic relationship, which takes up a large chunk of the movie. Kristen, incidentally, seems to be playing the same exact character she played in "Twilight", wounded and needy.

Based on the trailers, I was expecting something along the lines of "Superbad" but the movie was a lot closer to "Dazed & Confused", a well written period piece of the 1970's. The comedy aspect of the movie was in the interactions with his friends, parents, co-workers, and supervisors. There weren't a lot of LOL moments, but the humor is more in identifying with the characters and their lives.

I enjoyed the movie and anyone living or growing up during the 1980's will appreciate the mood & music of the film.

It's the summer of 1987, and James Brennan , an uptight recent college grad, can't wait to embark on his dream tour of Europe. But when his parents announce they can no longer subsidize his trip, James has little choice but to take a lowly job at a local amusement park. Forget about German beer, world-famous museums and cute French girls -- James' summer will now be populated by belligerent dads, stuffed pandas, and screaming kids high on cotton candy. Lucky for James, what should have been his worst summer ever turns into quite an adventure as he discovers love in the most unlikely place with his captivating co-worker Em, and learns to loosen up.

I could never really figure out what this movie was about. He gets a job at a themepark and there is this Lisa Ping girl. It's rwally just kinda pointless. I guess it's worth watching but there are alot of better movies. I give it a 2 out of 5

'Adventureland' is a melancholy voyage into the grey zone between adolescence and adulthood, school and career, lust and relationships, frivolity and responsibility. That is to say it is not 'Superbad' and that's supergood.

Upon graduating, comparative literature major James Brennan is informed that due to his father's recent demotion (alcoholism is an implied cause), the parents will not be funding his planned and hopefully transformative European vacation. James returns to his parents' Pittsburgh home with virginity and intellectual pretensions intact.

Still planning on attending Columbia Journalism School and needing funds, James seeks summer employment and settles for a job as a game both operator at Adventureland, a local amusement park that has seen better days. He is after all a comp lit major and not even qualified for manual labor.

Of course Adventureland is more than meets the eye. We're introduced to the interior lives of park employees. Extremely powerful performances are provided by Jesse Eisenberg, Martin Starr, Margarita Levieva, Ryan McFarland, and especially Kristen Stewart as James's sort of girlfriend Em.

These are not stock characters (with the exception of the ballbusting Frigo character, put here for childish laughs). The characters are emotionally and behaviorally complex. They wrestle with what it means to be young (or not so young) what it is to be in a relationship, the meaning of sex, employment, violence, drug use, fidelity, intellectualism, relationships with parents and their new spouses, the value of education. In short, what it means to be a person.

To enhance its verisimilitude, the film is mostly set to mid eighties tunes (Expose, The Mary Jane Girls, etc.). These songs are of the mid-eighties, but the film is set in 1987. It's a slight jab at the less than cutting edge nature of Pittsburghian society circa 1987. No matter, the film does not ridicule the zeitgeist. Rather, it takes seriously the emotional resonance of the sex, the music, the clothes, the hair, the ganja, the drinking, and the want to all involved (it was serious) and in so doing achieves poignancy.

The film touched me and not just because I was almost James's age living not too far from Pittsburgh in 1987, but because it addresses what it means to be on the shaky cusp of adulthood in such an honest way. A must see.