Director Greg Mottola hit a low-comic high with Superbad, which sets up a raucous promise Adventureland doesn't even want to keep. This look at college kids working in a tacky Pittsburgh amusement park in the summer of 1987 is drawn from Mottola's own life. The writer-director blends sassy and sad in the style of his 1996 debut, The Daytrippers.
Jesse Eisenberg (The Squid and the Whale) subs for Mottola as James, a pothead with an unpopped cherry and the hots for Em (Twilight's Kristen
