Amusement park comedy not superbad, not super good

On the surface, "Adventureland," director Greg Mottola's follow-up to his hit "Superbad," looks like just another good-time, raunchy romp, one with healthy amounts of partying and pranks to go along with its gross-out gags.

The 1987 amusement-park setting also allows Mottola to revel in dead-on period kitsch, from acid-washed jeans and teased-up bangs to the absurdly annoying strains of Falco's "Rock Me Amadeus," which repeatedly blares over the loud speakers. (Mottola wrote the script based on his own experiences working at a Long Island theme park while at Columbia University in the late '80s. Two decades later, he's clearly still traumatized, and understandably so.)

Yet, "Adventureland" has more on its mind - and in its heart - than that, as its college-age characters struggle to figure out who they are and what they want in a time of flux.

Mottola aims for a John Hughes style of comedy, the kind that begins with light laughs and ends up with analytical angst. Mottola doesn't always hit the right tone while covering such varied terrain. Still, you have to admire him for attempting to inject some substance into what can be a predictably mindless genre.

Standing in as Mottola is Jesse Eisenberg, playing a recent college graduate named James Brennan. He had been planning on a summer in Europe before heading to grad school.

Instead, he moves back home to Pittsburgh to live with his parents and work at the thoroughly mediocre Adventureland theme park.

His job in the games department (he would have preferred operating the rides) requires him to act enthusiastic about peddling schlocky prizes, although he learns pretty quickly that screwing with the clientele is a favorite activity of the park's veteran employees.

This is also a chief source of laughs in the early going, and it gives the film a buoyant energy until it turns heavier and darker. (Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig are underused as the overzealous married couple who run the place.)

Eisenberg plays the same awkward, quick-witted underdog we've seen in previous films like "The Squid and the Whale." At least James is brainy and likable. He shares amusing intellectual banter with Martin Starr as Joel, a pipe-smoking Russian literature expert. James also gets involved in a ridiculous romance with Lisa P. (Margarita Levieva), the hottest girl at the park.

Kristen Stewart falls back on her typical sullen expression and low-key delivery as Em, a well-off NYU student who's only working at Adventureland to get away from her family.

What James sees in her, besides her impeccable taste in music, is a mystery. One of the realistic touches in Mottola's film is the importance of poignant tunes in its characters' lives, with a soundtrack that features The Replacements, Husker Du and Lou Reed.

Ryan Reynolds refreshingly co-stars as a bad guy, a married musician who has trysts with girlfriends in the basement of his mother's house. Mottola seems more comfortable with the comedy than he does with the drama that Reynolds' character introduces. Such moments weigh down the film rather than provide it with gravitas.

It's like Mottola has chosen the right song, but it's not always in tune.