In this trailer for the forthcoming movie Flipped: 50’s hits, kids on bikes, sage father figures, and a voiceover that says, “Director Rob Reiner takes you back to the most unforgettable time of your life.” Apparently the movie also won “the Heartland Truly Moving Picture Award” (get it?).

Ah, yes, Rob Reiner longs for a sweeter, more innocent time, when love was simple because it was between children.

I tend to defend this kind of thing, but there’s something about this particular brand of Boomer nostalgia that makes me groan. It just feels canned, a shorthand for so many other things, repeated over and over again until it’s meaningless, and “heartfelt” just seems like the result of a studio calculation. I don’t doubt that this is some kind of meaningful autobiographical catharsis for Reiner (and maybe it’s just a bad trailer), but the formula is pretty stale.

On the other hand, I watched Adventureland again this week, and it strikes me as both an antidote to mawkish stuff liked Flipped, and a pretty perfect movie overall (I I think it’s the only DVD I’ve ever paid full price for). Obviously this is partly because I relate more to Adventureland, but it also has a lot to do with the way director Greg Mottola handled his movie’s obvious nostalgia factor: He manages to laugh at some of the more ridiculous things about the 80’s without letting the kitsch stand in for a story. The ringer tees and bubble gum and feathered hair feel like an accurate backdrop, and they  don’t distract from the familiar, painfully real dramas unfolding between a group of people stuck working a crappy summer job. Everyone in this movie is almost shockingly human, and the realest moments are some of the quietest: the sound of shoving a cassette in your car’s tape deck while driving at night with the windows open, on the way to meet up with someone you know is a bad idea. The passive-aggressive-compulsive way you repeatedly look over at someone you have a crush on. The way the light looks in the morning, in the anxious calm before customers show up.

Also, I love Kristen Stewart, and this is a movie she makes sense in. She certainly doesn’t in the Twilight movies. Sure, it’s nice that they cast someone vaguely edgy in that role, but she’s so far from the teen idol type that it’s crazy to see her face plastered all over tabloids, and to know that posters of her hang in so many bedrooms. Everyone talks about how uncomfortable she looks on red carpets and at awards shows, but her discomfort with all that bullshit is part of why I like her so much. It seems honest, like something she can’t control. Yeah, maybe she should figure out how to be famous without seeming like she’s in physical pain (and she probably shouldn’t overstate her case, though I have sympathy for that, too–did the executive directors of sexual assault organizations really need to reprimand her for “a poor choice of words”?). There’s a wonderful, elusive sort of awkwardness to her beauty…I keep trying to figure out where it’s coming from.

Weirdly, I had a dream the other night that my brother was dating Kristin Stewart (this is probably just because I haven’t met his real girlfriend yet). She was wearing a black hoodie, and she’d cut her hair into a short Joan Jett-ish mullet again and dyed it purple.