ADVENTURELAND (R) ****

Directed by Greg Mottola. 107 minutes.

Starring Jesse Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart, Ryan Reynolds, Jack Gilpin, Wendie Malick, Martin Starr, Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig. Released by Miramax Films.

In Adventureland, director Greg Mottola tackles that time honored teenage ritual of the tide-turning summer – you know, the one in which you found out that people whom we once idolized were not all they cracked up to be, the one involving that love interest that sticks out in the memory more than any other, the one in which a constant soundtrack for your life was ready-at-hand and the one in which you realized that life’s endless possibilities often went hand-in-hand with its disappointments. Cinematically, the Bildungsroman is a genre that has been revisited again and again, occassionally spawning a Rushmore, The Graduate or Say Anything, but most often not. In recent years, this type of film has become more of a free reign for dick and fart jokes, as if the only way a young man or woman can reach their next vital stage of life is through humiliation, bodily function mishaps, raunchy interludes and pop culture banter. But Mottola’s latest film, following on the heels of his slightly overrated mega hit Superbad, is a bittersweet concoction – that coming of age tale that consistently rings true. Though it’s often quite funny, the picture comes more for the heart than aims for the gut.

In a sense, Adventureland, set in 1987, is even timely. At the film’s beginning, 22-year-old virgin James Brennan (an affable, likeable Jesse Eisenberg, perfecting the neurotic youth character he first inhabited in The Squid and the Whale) is complaining about his lack of luck with the ladies. His problems are just beginning. James arrives home, post graduation, to find that his father has been downsized and that not only are his summer plans for a European vacation wrecked and his grad school future at Columbia University in jeopardy, but that he must also get a summer job. In one of the film’s funnier moments, the Renaissance art major asks his parents whether he actually has skills that could get him employed. “Unless someone needs me to restore a fresco, I’m screwed,” he quips.

He soon finds himself working as one of the “Games” crew at a whipped amusement park – Mottola himself worked at Long Island’s Adventureland, though the film transplants the story to the suburbs of Pittsburgh – where employees are split into two distinct groups, which include the brainier, soulful “Games” gang and the “Rides” folk, who tend to be attractive party girls and frat boys. James stumbles upon Joel (Martin Starr), a gangly Gogol-loving, pipe smoking compatriot in literature and the lovely Em (Kristen Stewart), who manages to be the only person at the park impressed by his plan to write Dickensian travelogues that focus less on resorts and more on trips to asylums and prisons. Also thrown into the mix is Ryan Reynolds, the park’s electrical handyman who allegedly once jammed with Lou Reed, who brings some gravitas to a role that could have been written as a one-note joke.

Love blossoms between James and Em, who is much more complex than most of the quirky, inoffensive girls who would typically be written for this type of film, and conflicts arise when it is discovered that Em has some problems of her own, including a tryst with a married man and issues at home. There’s also a “Rides” temptress who lures James, as well as our hero’s parents, who worry that his summer job is turning into a lifestyle. Much of the humor in Adventureland works so well because rather than relying the typical jokes centered on the hero’s embarrassment or humor revolving around how alien women are to the men in these types of films, Mottola’s picture appears to draw its inspiration from the collective experiences of young men who have been pushed out of college and into an often frightening, occassionally disappointing, world. It’s funny because it’s so damn recognizable. There are sequences here that are so painfully true that they must surely be autobiographical.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the film’s soundtrack. It is almost expected these days that if you are a filmmaker directing a movie set in America during the 1970s, 1980s or 1990s, then you’d better damn sure have a marketable soundtrack. There are a handful of directors – I’m thinking Quentin Tarantino. Paul Thomas Anderson, Wes Anderson, Cameron Crowe and a few more – who can really pull it off. Add Mottola to the list. Adventureland contains some 50 odd songs, most of which work beautifully; from Lou Reed’s sad “Satellite of Love,” which accompanies and alludes to some of the film’s pivotal scenes, and Falco’s “Rock Me Amadeus,” which makes for one of the film’s funniest running jokes, to a solid opener on The Replacements’ “Bastards of Young” and Crowded House’s lovely “Don’t Dream It’s Over,” which is used in one of the film’s sweeter moments. Just as each generation since the birth of rock ‘n’ roll has a difficult time separating its anthems from its collective memories, I can’t imagine Mottola’s film not being mentioned as one of the best films of its type for this decade. It’s a sad, joyful little movie.