There are capital-G Guys, and then there is Greg Mottola, whose semi-autobiographical “how I spent my summer vacation” comedy Adventureland insists that back in his college days, the young director was more sensitive than all those other dudes who just wanted to get laid. That would be fine and all if the big payoff the movie works toward was something other than a scene in which Mottola’s fictional stand-in (played by The Squid and the Whale’s Jesse Eisenberg) gets to ball the girl of his dreams (Kristen Stewart, operating on the other end of the chastity spectrum from her Twilight character). I mean, he’s not that special: The world is full of late-blooming virgins with the romantic notion that two people should really love each other before they have sex (Mottola already dealt with that idea quite nicely when Michael Cera’s character passes up his first time in Superbad).

More interesting than the movie’s paint-by-numbers relationship plot is the environment in which it all goes down. Coming home from his senior year in college, James Brennan learns that his dad has been demoted at work, meaning his family can’t afford to send him to Europe for the summer as planned. Instead, he’s stuck in Pittsburgh with a plastic bag full of joints and the terrifying realization that his college degree is good for nothing more than a shit job at the local amusement park.

A place like Adventureland would make the perfect stage for a Larry Clark-style look at adolescence: In theory, such venues offer a delicious contrast between the fun, clean-scrubbed surface they represent to kids and all the transgressive behavior that goes on between the hormone-addled employees, as they get high on their cigarette breaks, land their first VD from the girl who runs the Ferris wheel or what have you. But Mottola has a far tamer view of the park. Considering that he really held such a job, you’d hope for more insider insights than the fact that the concessions have sometimes passed their expiration date and the games are rigged so no one can win a “giant-ass panda bear” (among comedies, only Waiting has really nailed the borderline-depraved atmosphere of minimum-wage ennui).

What are the chances that James would meet his soul mate in such a place anyway? The guy’s a budding blowhard with degrees in comparative literature and Renaissance studies, for crying out loud. While his fellow Guys are fixated on Lisa P., a perfectly proportioned but vacant-minded airhead played by Margarita Levieva, James prefers Stewart’s Em. Why, it’s hard to say exactly. She’s certainly the more appealing actress, but it’s not like the characters share all that much in common, apart from a withering disdain for the world around them. What James doesn’t realize is that Em has been hooking up with resident stud Connell (Ryan Reynolds), the aloof, slightly older maintenance man who embodies the sexual self-confidence James lacks.

Adventureland will inevitably suffer comparisons to Superbad, which was spontaneous and alive in a way this follow-up merely feels scripted. Perhaps that’s because Mottola relives those 1987 summer nights with the benefit of hindsight, identifying less with the crippling insecurity James is experiencing in the moment than a more mature, big-picture view of events (things were simpler in those days, when “Rock Me Amadeus” playing one too many times over the loudspeaker was genuine cause for annoyance). It’s a noxious subgenre to the coming-of-age tale: The “do-over movie” — nostalgic films like Charlie Bartlett, where everybody says and does what the writer-director wishes had happened back in school.

Mottola is great with actors, but less gifted as a writer and sometimes downright clumsy as a director. It takes a good half hour for the film to find its rhythm, and even then, some scenes just don’t work. He’s self-deprecating enough to make the character feel real, but there’s nothing honest or particularly original about the relationship on which everything depends. In the movie, James is sore that he’s stuck working games, rather than rides. Twenty years later, it seems Mottola finally got his wish: Like one of those Adventureland roller coasters, the story sticks to the track, offering the same predictable twists and thrills we’ve experienced dozens of times before. You buy your ticket knowing what you’re in for up front. And yet, with The Daytrippers and Superbad, Mottola has given us good reason to expect a lot more.