MOVIE SMACKDOWN!

Adventureland (2009) -vs- Waiting (2005)

 I Went to College for This? 

The Smackdown.  The crappy post-college job is a rite of passage.  It builds character, teaches you humility and better prepares you for “the real world.”  Or at least that’s what I’ve been told.  Currently stuck in that listless limbo between past collegiate freedom and looming “adulthood” I sympathize with the main characters of “Adventureland” and “Waiting,” who struggle to find their own unique places in the supposedly grown-up world. Though the trials and triumphs of directionless twenty-somethings is hardly constitutes new cinematic ground, both films attempt to make their mark on the well-worn genre. It’s slacker versus slacker, and there can only be one winner.

The Challenger. It’s 1987 and James has just graduated from college and is preparing to spend the summer abroad before beginning grad school at Columbia.  Unfortunately for him, Reaganomics haven’t worked out for his family – his father’s been demoted, so there’s no money for either Europe or Columbia.  Forced to find a summer job, James soon realizes that his degree in Renaissance Studies hardly qualifies him for manual labor. "Unless someone wants help restoring a fresco, I'm fucked," he mutters after yet another none-too-subtle telephonic rejection. He ultimately takes the only job he can find, working games at Adventureland, a run down, second-rate amusement park where the rides make you puke, the corn dogs are possibly lethal and the games are rigged so that “no one ever wins a giant-ass panda.”  Under the watchful eye of the park’s exuberant managers, Bobby and his wife Paulette, James begins to immerse himself in the everyday life of Adventureland.   

Brideshead Revisited (2008) -vs- Atonement (2007)

Boys from the Wrong Side of the Tracks

The Smackdown. There's no doubt that superheroes and stoners are king at this summer's box office, but if you're craving a little romanticism - oh hell, a LOT of romanticism - and stories that don't rely on car chases, Swedish pop music or the wit of forty year old adolescents, then Julian Jarrold's "Brideshead Revisited" may be exactly what you're looking for.  The film is already drawing comparisons to last year's epic period piece "Atonement."  On the surface these two films appear to be very similar - both are adapted from remarkable works of fiction, set in similar time periods and locations, and each film features a young man of humble birth who falls for a woman of a much higher social standing.  While both films touch on the struggle between the classes, "Atonement" explores the power of words, perception and forgiveness, while "Brideshead Revisited" focuses more on religion and the often incomprehensible meanderings of the human heart.  Today these films forget their good breeding, set aside their high society manners and battle it out to prove that they are not your parents' period dramas.

The Challenger.  Julian Jarrold directs the latest version of Evelyn Waugh's famous "Brideshead Revisited."  Set in England during the years before WWII, the film centers around Charles Ryder, a young middle class painter.  During his first year at Oxford Charles meets Sebastian Flyte, a beguiling and flamboyant aristocrat.  Sebastian and Charles begin an intense, though platonic, friendship. Their relationship is further complicated when Charles spends the summer at Sebastian’s sprawling estate at Brideshead and is introduced to Sebastian’s glamorous sister, Julia, and their devoutly Catholic mother, Lady Marchmain. Both brother and sister claim to be “heathens” and “sinners,” but both are so tied to their mother’s dogma that it will haunt them the rest of their lives. Julia and Sebastian are drawn to Charles because he is completely untouched by the world they live in.  Charles, however, is dazzled by their opulent lifestyle, by the palatial Brideshead, and by the siblings and all that they represent. He’s so taken by it all, in fact, that he soon finds himself swept up in the family’s convoluted affairs.