Sometimes life presents us with certain situations that can't help but teach us a thing or two about ourselves, our world, and what this life is all about. We call them life-changing moments. We see them as our highest mountains and our lowest valleys. We connect them to drama, death, and extreme detours.

But the truth is that our greatest times of learning and self-discovery are not always paired with tragically inspiring dramas of epic proportions. Our greatest wisdom isn't gained in a moment. Our greatest personal growth isn't accomplished in conjunction with a single life event. The truth is that sometimes our greatest life lessons arrive in the "in between," amid the lingering effects of those life events that have already occurred and the longing for those that have yet to come... and in weeks and days as ordinary as a post-college summer working at an amusement park.

Loosely based on director Greg Mottola's own experience working at an amusement park on Long Island and finding his way in the world as a young adult, Adventureland tells the story of James Brennan (Jesse Eisenberg), his first summer out of college, and Adventureland, the amusement park he gets a job at to try to provide for the future he has always planned. Sounds like the perfect recipe for an hour and half of goofy cotton candy escapades, crude college humor, and shallow teen realizations, you say? Actually, it's not. Where every joke in the movie could have been crude, most are drawn more from the clever dialogue that brings to life each of its characters and their relationships. Where the park definitely sees its share of young adult drama and substance-fueled hijinks, the situations each character faces deal with much more than who made out in the roller coaster last night and how much they drank after. And while the movie ends with the summer amusement park season and a young-adult rite of passage or two, its story is one that reaches beyond just the summer of 1987.

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