Director Greg Mottola started writing his newest film, “Adventureland,” before he thought up his 2007 smash-hit teen comedy “Superbad.”

The movie, which hits theaters Friday, is a coming-of-age dramedy about James (Jesse Eisenberg), a virginal college graduate who finds himself working a demeaning summer job at the Adventureland theme park in Pittsburgh after his parents’ finances collapse and his Columbia grad-school plans are put on hold.

“I started writing this script before I even did ‘Superbad,’ and it was definitely my intention for it to be a more dramatic and realistic slice-of-life movie,” Mottola said in an interview with The State Press. “The drama of it is hopefully about a guy who has to make some decisions about the kind of person he wants to be.”

The film has received rave reviews thus far, earning a 90 percent “fresh” score on review site rottenomatoes.com, based on 29 reviews.

The amusement park in the film is named and modeled after Mottola’s own former place of employment in Long Island, N.Y.

Although the production was originally set to film on location in Long Island, better tax rebates and a relatively small budget convinced Mottola to move the shoot to Pittsburgh, where he earned his bachelor’s degree in fine arts from Carnegie Mellon many years ago.

In addition to his real-life parallels, Mottola has much in common with James, including his awkward personality and plans to attend Columbia for graduate school (where Mottola got his master’s degree).

“My philosophy was that if I’m going to make fun of anyone, it should be the younger version of myself,” Mottola said. “When I was Jesse’s age, I had a lot of awkwardness, a lot of earnestness and a lot of misguided ideas about what relationships are.”

The film’s soundtrack, available for planet-friendly digital download only, boasts 14 colorful rock hits from the 1980s, including tunes by Lou Reed, David Bowie, The Cure and The Velvet Underground.

“Rock Me Amadeus” by Falco plays incessantly through the Adventureland speakers.

Mottola said he was influenced by ’80s films like “Caddyshack” and “Fast Times at Ridgemont High.”

“[In] “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” there are a lot of scenes with people working really bad mall jobs in that movie,” Mottola said.

Mottola has frequently been compared to John Hughes, legendary director of “The Breakfast Club,” “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” the “National Lampoon” series and “Sixteen Candles.”

“Part of me thinks the comparison is because there’s a strong female character,” Mottola said. “His films captured something that was really real about life in the suburbs.”

Mottola said his favorite part of the movie is a sequence of events where James and his love interest, Em (Kristen Stewart of “Twilight”) eat some marijuana cookies.

“That was one of the ones where the way I saw it in my head and the way it turned out are exactly the same,” he said.

Mottola has long been on the forefront of a movement toward more character-focused films and television shows.

In 1997’s “The Daytrippers,” he followed on Eliza, a woman who drives a station wagon into New York City with her parents and sister in tow to confront her cheating husband.

“Judd Apatow [producer of “Knocked Up,” “Pineapple Express” and “Step Brothers”] has changed the playing field so it’s more ok to make movies more character-centered and relationship-centered,” Mottola said.

Mottola directed several episodes of Fox’s cult comedy “Arrested Developme nt” and Judd Apatow’s “Undeclared,” a follow-up to TV cult classic “Freaks and Geeks.”

Despite his success in television, Mottola said he probably woould’t go back to the small screen for a while.

“I have to admit that my dream was always to do films,” he said, “so I’m going to keep doing it as long as they keep letting me.”

Reach the reporter at melanie.kiser@asu.edu.