Back in 1996, Greg Mottola wrote and directed an excellent, low-key indie comedy called The Daytrippers, starring Hope Davis, Liev Schrieber, Campbell Scott, Parker Posey, Stanley Tucci--basically, your all-star indie cast, circa 1996. It got great reviews and did just well enough commercially to consign Motttola to the ranks of directors working in TV, where he gained a toehold on what would become the Judd Apatow Comedy Juggernaut by directing several episodes of the short-lived, Apatow-created series Undeclared. In a roundabout way, this would lead to his getting to direct Superbad, the monster hit written by Seth Rogan and Evan Goldberg, with Apatow on board as a producer. Next week sees the release of the third film he has directed and the second he has made from his own script, Adventureland, a coming-of-age comedy, set in 1987, about a fresh college graduate (played by Jesse Eisenberg) spending his summer working at a Pittsburgh amusement park and falling in love with a co-worker, played by Twilight's Kristen Stewart. Given the youthful characters, the noisy, hormonal atmosphere, and the presence in the cast of such SNL stalwarts as Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig--not to mention that bad banner on the ads reading "from the director of Superbad"--audiences who wouldn't know The Daytrippers from the Night Stalker might very well show up expecting Superbad II, a possible misunderstanding that the studio might have little interest in discouraging.
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