03/26/10 - Adventureland

Adventureland (2009, 107 min)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1091722/

This movie is a rewatch of a movie I have already written about. The previous post is here:
08/21/10 - Adventureland

This time I knew exactly what I was going to get when I began my Adventureland watching. The reason I picked the film was that I felt that the movie exactly matched my current mood and seeing this put into a film (with a feel-good ending) was something I wanted to watch.

I'd like to reiterate how well done the characters are in Adventureland. There's about five or so people that all have distinct personalities that work at the theme park and each one is thought out and shown to be well rounded. And again I say this: the "kids" acting in Adventureland act well beyond their years.

The one character I'd like to single out with his own paragraph is that of Tommy Frigo. Frigo isn't a main character, but rather one of the secondary ones, but I just really really like the way he's created. Our first meeting with Frigo is when he's riding on his bike and he gives James a nice one finger salute for no reason (along with a gigantic smirk on his face). When James can't get a job anywhere else, Frigo gets him a job at Adventureland (though by the look of it, I doubt this was that hard). When Frigo finds out there's something up between Em and Connell, he lets James know and he then drives him over to where Em is. But every other time we see Frigo interacting with James we see him punching him in the groin and making fun of him nonstop. Well, except for the last scene with Frigo where he's running around setting off fireworks on a hill while pretending to be fighting in Vietnam. Anyway, it all creates a good balance and actually places Frigo up there in my list of favorite film characters of probably the last ten years. Sure he's a "jerk" to James all the time but he knows when to be a good friend and help him out as well.

Overall, I gave this film an 8/10 this time. This is a notch up from the 7/10 I gave on my last viewing. The reason for this is how well constructed the characters are. I mainly knocked Adventureland in my last review because of how cliché it was and how predictable it turned out to be. I realize now that this isn't so much a movie telling a new story - it's telling some story that happens a lot but it's making it with unique, memorable, and well developed characters. And for all that I'm going to give it an 8/10.