Adventureland grapples with post-university angst in a move reminiscent of the
works of Linklater, Apatow and Nichols. (Creative Commons licensed)

It's damn hard growing up, even if you're a privileged kid from the suburbs with plans for a European vacation and a future spot on Columbia University's prestigious journalism grad school roster.

Or so it goes in Adventureland, Greg Mottola's latest film about that initial crush of reality that throws a wrench into so many young adults' post-college dreams of sexual exploration and literary world domination.  

It's the quintessential coming-of-age story so familiar in the cinematic medium and nothing is out of the ordinary here.  The kids are intelligent and fresh-faced, parents are clueless workaholics and the story is, for the most part, relatable. This is true despite its soundtrack being a bit rife with the existential angst of Lou Reed on repeat.  

The year is 1987.  Brainy, mop-topped James (Jesse Eisenberg) is freshly graduated with a degree in comparative literature; a concentration that has prepared him for only the most mundane of summer jobs.  His plans of gallivanting around "the continent" with his college buddy are quashed due to his father's sudden demotion at work.  So with nothing else to do, he moves back in with mom and pop in suburban Pittsburgh armed with a bag full of joints and enough ennui to make Sylvia Plath turn in her grave.

In perhaps a foreshadowing of what he would face if he ends up going to journalism grad school, the only job he can find is as a carney at the titular local amusement park.  A cast of misfits, gum-chewing sexpots, meathead carnival attendees and awkward parental figures predictably pervade the screen.

As does James' moody, taciturn love interest Em, played by a brooding Kristin Stewart in a barrage of band T-shirts that mirror the actual soundtrack.  Much of the narrative thrust of the film is spent watching their courtship ebb and flow with each side's self-consciousness and personal baggage.  Most of the other action plays out tinged with pot smoke and cheap beer in various hangouts that recall scenes in Richard Linklater's Dazed and Confused.

The story is loosely based on Mottola's own experience as a freshly minted 20-something working at a similar park in Long Island, N.Y.  Each character is precise, from Joel, the geeky, Russian literature-obsessed game attendant to James' immature childhood best friend Tommy Frigo. These supporting personalities have a level of depth that could have easily been lost in the superficialities of their character templates. It is perhaps this personal attachment to the subject matter that sets this film apart from its Apatowian contemporaries, and even Mottola's last hit Superbad.

There is gross-out humor--puke, boner jokes and strangely homoerotic ball-shots are all here--but it's played down to a much more digestible level.  There are fewer laugh-out-loud scenes, as cheap shots that rely on outrageousness are few.

With Adventureland, Mottola has firmly marked his territory in the market for coming-of-age films with a sweet suburban innocence, somewhere between the Apatows, Linklaters and Nichols (The Graduate) before him.