Adventureland

The reviews were coming in good, but I was still reluctant - another teen-in-love movie?

But I went anyway and was I pleasantly surprised.

All the actors are terrific, but it's the story that makes this movie a cut above the usual run of teen-angst films.

These are all college-plus folks - the young man, Jammie (Jessie Eisenberg) a recent college grad, is all set to join a friend for a summer in Europe, but a financial setback with dad forces him to cancel plans as the family moves to Pittsburgh where dad takes a lesser job and Jammie takes a meaningless job in an amusement park, running games, where he meets an assortment of going-nowhere-fast summer employees.

Jammie meets Em, a complicated young lady with a painful home life, played splendidly by Kristen Stewart, whose face is filled with the uncanny depth of sorrow. She's being jerked around by a jerk (Ryan Reynolds), good-looking and fun, but married, who takes her over to his mother's house for sex - well, so much for romance. He's having a good time, but Em is lost.

In Jammie, she meets someone with a different take on life.

He's well-read, an intellectual, who wants to be a journalist. His "experience" with life is limited, but she doesn't seem to mind one bit, and no one else does either. But love is close at hand, unfolding in its usually bumpy fashion. They both end up hurting one another, and then slowly reach out to one another.

At one point, in one of the best lines ever, he says to her (as best as I recall): "You don't ignore the folks you've screwed up with."

Who doesn't screw up now and then? But the point of a relationship is finding those bridges that transcend the screwups.

At the end of the summer ... well, I won't give it away, but this film has one of the best "love" endings I've seen. Where's there's love, there's hope!

The parents, the other friends - Bobby (Bill Hader), the amusement park manager - a real hoot with his baseball bat protecting his employees; Eric (Michael Zegen), a pipe-smoking Jewish nihilist who waxes eloquent on the trials of life - terrific.

Hats off to the writer/director, Greg Mottola - what might have been a formulaic piece is real story that, for me, had the feel of real life, real characters, trying to find their way.

As for message: it's good to be smart, to be bookish, to be able to carry on a thoughtful conversation - life isn't all about sex and booze - and most kids are smart enough to know that - this film affirms them and is filled with hope in the midst of life's hardships - family reversals, death and missteps.

This is definitely worth seeing ... even as I write, I'm thinking I might see it again.

Having lived in Pittsburgh a few years, it was fun to "think" about that good city again - though filmed there, it's not about the city, but "Adventureland" - actually, Kennywood, an old-time amusement park just right for this 1987 period piece.