Adventureland

Remember your first time, you know, at an amusement park? Or getting head? Well, you can re-live all of the sticky glory in Adventureland, a very effective coming-of-age movie about a virginal late bloomer (Jesse Eisenberg), the debauched and awkward girl of his dreams (Kristen Stewart) and the magic they make while hanging in the outcast section of 1987. Greg Mottola, who directed the funny but only marginally inventive Superbad, does much better with this, his first writer/director credit. The acting is largely excellent; the script is sensitive and sad; and, except for a recurring joke about getting punched in the penile region, the film is an above-board examination of how the worst summer of your life will be the best summer of your life.