reviews
MOVIE: Adventureland
Hmm ... Adventureland. Just as the title leads you to believe, this movie is quite the adventure. From the same guys who brought you Superbad, which is superior to this movie in so many ways, comes this uncanny version of the 1987 life of the college-aged young adult, James, struggling with self-identity. But let's not be too serious.
James finds himself in a predicament. Instead of using his summer after graduation to discover the romanticism of Europe, he finds himself wasting away at a very rundown amusement park because his father received a pay cut. At Adventureland, the park, he meets Em, the irresistible NYU student with a dark side. Boy meets girl. Elsewhere is a girl named Lisa P., who is every young man's '80s beauty.Alongside them is the Russian lit major Joel and the Adventureland managers played awkwardly (in a good way) by Bill Hader and Saturday Night Live's Kristen Wiig.
Amid the jumble of 20s angst and aspirations lies another issue: daddy issues. It seems that every character, save perhaps Joel and Ryan Reynold's character, has an issue dealing with a father figure, ranging from job loss and alcoholism to replacing mothers with an evil stepmother too quickly.
All the actors do a phenomenal job convincing us that working at a theme park in the summer
of 1987 is pointless, so much, in fact, that you might not need to see the movie to understand its theme.
Mia Iverson
BOOK: Will Marry for Food, Sex, and Laundry by Simon Oaks
I don't deem myself a desirable wife: I can't cook, I'd rather buy new clothes than clean previous ones, and I don't seem to possess a maternal bone in my body. So imagine my optimism when I decided to read the latest relationship how-to book: Will Marry for Food, Sex, and Laundry by Simon Oaks. Oaks attempts to reassure women of their marrying ability by twisting their perspectives into men's interpretations. For example, jealous and nagging women should implement simple communicating, nurturing and ego-boosting skills in order to satisfy men's Neanderthal needs.
Over the course of the 200-paged, politically incorrect marriage manual, I learned how to differentiate between cuts of cow in order to feed my meat-loving man, how to amp up the sexy vibe by committing to his sexual fantasies, and how to assign "man chores" for him to feel empowered by accomplishing an easy household task.
Although the aforementioned are obviously worthwhile lessons in life, I'm sad to say I wasn't enlightened by the guidelines guaranteed to enhance my man-capturing skills. There are a thousand different humiliating and heartbreaking
ways to screw up a relationship, much less a marriage, and I don't need a book to tell me that.
— Kelci Shipley
16
April 16,2009