"Adventureland" is a romantic comedy about a dweeby virgin who works at an amusement park on summer break and listens to indie rock while he pines for a gloomy girl. I did all of those things, as did writer-director Greg Mottola ("Superbad"). But although this '80s flashback has an appealing sheen of sweetness, it sticks so closely to the rhythms of remembrance that it lacks dramatic impact. We've heard this story too many times before.

One place we heard it, and heard it with more dissonant details, was in Noah Baumbach's similarly autobiographical film "The Squid and the Whale." The star of that movie, Jesse Eisenberg, is back in mopey mode as James, a recent Renaissance-studies grad stuck in Pittsburgh for the summer of '87. With no experience or skills, he takes a job at an amusement park called Adventureland.

The setting should have provided some colorful images or humor, especially with Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig as the woeful owners. But the script concentrates on James and his co-workers, to the virtual exclusion of the customers, rides and attractions that make an amusement park so vivid.

James' co-workers include a pipe-smoking Russian-lit major (Martin Starr), a gum-chomping disco dolly (Margarita Levieva), a guitar-playing maintenance man (Ryan Reynolds) and a straight-talking waif named Emily (Kristen Stewart).

Because Emily is smart and cynical, James thinks she might be the soulmate for his sexual initiation. But he doesn't realize that she's having an affair with the married maintenance man, to whom James confides his feelings.

Emily's double life is the one hint of the unpredictable in a script that otherwise relies on coming-of-age clichés like pot-brownie freakouts and tearful confessions in the rain.

Many viewers will find it a literate, low-key alternative to mindless teen comedies. But the punk rocker in me expected a movie called "Adventureland" to be more adventurous.