Adventureland: Now, That's What I Call A Soundtrack!

Film soundtracks are a curious art form. At once both separate from, and melded to, the more vital action of a movie, they are, like the eerie wooden mask that clung to Stanley Ipkiss' face in '94, entirely dependant on their controller. In the right hands they are wonderful beings (see Reservoir Dogs, Grosse Pointe Blank, anything by Wes Anderson); a part of a film's identity, often acting as a musical time capsule, they celebrate the brilliance of the songs themselves whilst making sure to embrace, if not enhance or even set, the film's tone and tempo; they are proud and vital, never distracting.

Go the other way, though, and this is sadly more often the case, and a soundtrack more than likely becomes one of two ugly, venal creatures. The first is a tell-tale sign of egotistical film-making; a vehicle by which a director can be found flicking through his iPod and appropriating his favourite songs to any old scene in order to massage his own musical ego. The second, though, is almost more deadly. It is the seediest of beasts; the compilation CD built, most probably by music management bosses, with an eye to promoting the next American anthem-rock band or heart-on-the-sleeve crybaby (see Twilight in both cases, nay, EVERY case, see Twilight for everything unsacred and unholy). This is my vision of hell, a place where every inch of art is tainted with the brush of commerce, where the marketing department is paid more than the camera crew. Is this true already? Most likely.

ADVENTURELAND, the new movie from 'Superbad' director Greg Mottola, is an autobiographical coming-of-age story set in a run down amusement park somewhere is no-place, USA. Young James (Jesse Eisenberg), has a place at Columbia grad school, with dreams of writing travel diaries like Dickens did, yet when his parents tell him they will not be funding his further education, nor his oncoming summer jaunt to the cultural super-power that is Europe, James is forced to take a job at Adventureland, a low grade fun park teaming with stoners, oddballs and unattainable disco chicks. Stuck in a personal hell (god forbid there should be no-one around who understands the theological symbolism of Moby Dick), James' life is salvaged only by a burgeoning romance with the punk-liking, band t-shirt-wearing, straight-talking Em (Kristen Stewart).

The film is decidedly ordinary from the outset, seemingly confused about whether or not to give more importance to comedy or drama, and as such giving not enough time to either. It is a blur of eighties nostalgia, spinning like a half-baked teacup ride around an unrelenting stream of tracks from some of the era's musical stalwarts like Lou Reed, David Bowie, INXS and The Cure. Though emphatically, and endearingly, reproduced, it quickly becomes clear that Mottola is struggling to paint his own picture with any panache, presumably aware of the fact that James's story, no matter how closely tied to his own, is really quite boring. His reaction to this appears to have been to build a film which is, in itself, an 80's-sponsored theme park where everyone looks and sounds uncannily like the past, and in which we, as an audience, are more interested in the clothes we used to wear or the songs we used to hear than the badly made waxworks wearing them.

What remains, I am sad to say, when the Whitesnake and leg-warmers are removed, is a fragmented mess of stagnant comedy set-ups (often involving the dullest Hollywood devices: weed, alcohol and genitals), piled up around a series of melodramatic outpourings and arguments that have the icky smell of a Dawson's Creek or an O.C., the kind of tangled teen romance story that makes you want to pull both characters aside and tell them to walk away, lest they be trapped in a never ending circle of fighting in the street and re-uniting in the rain.

Where the quality lies in Adventureland is in its supporting cast. Though Eisenberg and Stewart are both clearly capable actors, they have been given too much to do, too many lifeless lines to say and too much coo-ing and whining to force down, and as such they often look tired and out of ideas. Luckily, where these two fail to make gripping their quite banal issues, the slack is often picked up by the park's scatty but loveable management team, Bobby and Paulette (Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig) and James' new found friend Joel, played with verve by Martin Starr, all of whom provide an affectionate chaos to proceedings.

Yet it is, to return full circle, the biggest sign of the film's shortcomings that the funniest joke of the entire two hours (seems long doesn't it, for a teen rom-com...) is a recurring one that depends, just as the movie's success will do, on the audience's ability to remember the 80s (and more specifically the track 'Amadeus' by Austrian electro-dandy Falco). It is the case with Adventureland, as it has often been with films with such little confidence in the quality of their product, that it is the soundtrack that will be remembered when the audience have left, and nothing else. And where for some movies it is because the music is so good that it comes to dominate, with Adventureland it appears to be because everything else is, well, not-so-good.