EisenbergLand

In the past week, I've seen two movies that use an amusement park to trigger a young man's coming of age and both, Adventureland and Zombieland, feature Jesse Eisenberg. Like Michael Cera and John Heder, he's the smart, sweet but socially awkward character that you expect to see at the center of a huge romantic mess and love to see come out on top and get the girl against all odds.

Carnivals with their dangerous and transgressive allure are often the settings for such stories. They are places where the young can tap into emerging desire and play dangerously. (In fact, I just saw a trailer for The Vampire's Assistant which seems to chart the same kind of path) What's interesting about the two Eisenberg movies is that the young man's story is framed within 2 completely different genres.

Adventureland is a small, indie film in which Eisenberg finds himself forced to work in a seedy carnival before grad school. A luckless romantic he blindly struggles to forge a relationship with one of his edgy, pretty co-carnies. All set to very cool, appropriate 80s music. Like the seedy carnival and the awful carny job, it's a rather sad and small movie. You root for Eisenberg's character and you're happy when he gets the girl. But there's no real joy.

Eisenberg's character is just as neurotic in Zombieland, but the conversion of most of the human race into raging zombies gives him the opportunity to overcome his anxieties and save the girl in an orgy of cathartic violence. Needless to say, there's a heckuva lot more carnage in Zombieland but there's also a lot more laughter.