30 of 53 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Adventureland, or: How I Bought a Ticket to Rehash, but Walked Away with Uniquity, April 7, 2009
This review is from: Adventureland soundtrack CD (Audio CD)
So, to get past the obvious: Kristen Stewart is officially the EMO version of Meg Ryan.
And that ain't a bad thing. She is oddly captivating. Where Meg Ryan was stand-in-the-street-look-I'm-cute kind of charisma, Kristen is the girl on the stoop cutting herself and offering you a PBR...and you want to spend the rest of the rain soaked day with her.
But to the film, besides it's spot-on casting, it's subdued use of Ryan Reynolds (is that possible? He seems destined to be in "The Dane Cook Story: Comedy Through Syncopated Joke Theft"), it's painting of characters as both giving and selfish, it's pace and it's resistance to a typical cenimatic AH-HA moment, I was mostly blown away by the Soundtrack.
And not via nostalgic obsession: love of all things, when you lost your virginity and discovered rum AND coke used in a bong is awesome kind of way. No. The Brilliance...no, genius...no, both are over used... The film's SAT score of 710 (>State, <Ivy) is in HOW it uses the songs we know and love.
Sure, everyone goes ga ga over The Cure, even if you play it at a party today. But they have managed to re-listen to these songs are apply them when emotionally appropriate, where they are connected to the characters. Not as we usually experience them: as some montage overlay, or transitional bed that is cut short to save on usage costs. They let them play out (the bumper car scene is the most effective example) and you are usually engaged enough it what is happening that you don't immediately recognize the song. Even if it was the one accompanying the first trip to second base.
I previously hated Lou Reed's Satellite of Love, in general - except one trip I had with Quay Parrot, crossing the Mississippi, listening to it on tape - but hearing it again, in a different context, and from the character's sense of fresh experience, it felt like just as emotionally driven as any John Mayer "Your Body is Wonderland" song today.
This is one time where I will say:
don't buy the CD, don't download the MP3s;
the soundtrack is in the movie.
...and really, who uses the term uniquity, except Ethan Hawk in Rolling Stone.
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