'Daytrippers'? Done. What's Next? A Long Journey.

On a winter night in 1996, a group of bleary-eyed filmgoers gathered for a midnight screening at the Slamdance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. They were there to see "The Daytrippers," a by turns funny and touching urban picaresque by an unknown filmmaker named Greg Mottola. (The film starred Hope Davis, Stanley Tucci, Parker Posey and a then-unknown Liev Schreiber; the biggest name was its producer, Steven Soderbergh.) The lights went down on an audience of exhausted skeptics, but when they came up an hour and a half later, Mottola had won dozens of newly converted fans. After "The Daytrippers" was released the following year, they waited eagerly for his next film.

And waited.

And waited.

Jump-cut to 2009, and Mottola is finally presenting his sophomore writing-directing effort, the coming-of-age romance "Adventureland," which arrives in theaters on Friday. It's not that Mottola hasn't made a movie since "The Daytrippers" -- he directed the surprise hit "Superbad," after all. But that raunchy teen comedy couldn't be described as Mottola's really-truly sophomore film, having been written by someone else and having originated in the Judd Apatow comic empire. And although Mottola's admirers could see his humanistic touch through the porn and profanity, "Superbad" didn't bear his complete stamp, a distinctive sensibility combining observant wit, an oblique dramatic touch and empathy for human frailty.

"Adventureland" possesses all of those signature touches, as well as the of-the-moment stars Jesse Eisenberg ("The Education of Charlie Banks") and Kristen Stewart ("Twilight"). The movie, set in the 1980s, is about a recent college graduate who is forced to move in with his parents and work at a decrepit amusement park, where he falls in love with a girl who both confounds and fascinates him. (The film is partly based on Mottola's real-life experiences during the summer of 1984.) With its air of nostalgia, rue and romance, "Adventureland" will no doubt delight those purists who keep insisting that "Superbad" wasn't a real Greg Mottola film. The only question is, what took him so long?

"Tell me about it," the director said recently. The story of Mottola's circuitous journey to making "Adventureland" involved the usual U-turns and dead ends, heartbreak, near misses and a fateful brush with Apatow. Just after "The Daytrippers" was released, Mottola came this close to making "The Life of the Party," an ensemble piece starring John Cusack, but the studio backed out at the last minute, leery of the film's subject matter (alcoholism) and a star they deemed unbankable. The experience left Mottola feeling wounded. "The reason it took so long for me to get here is [that I held] myself up to an impossible standard of some fantasy career that I thought I'd have -- that I'd only write and direct my own movies and anything else I did would be an admission of failure," he said. "And I think I had classic writer's block. I wrote this one script that I really loved, and it broke my heart that it didn't get made, and I couldn't figure out what to write next."

While Mottola was preparing to film "The Life of the Party," Apatow called, asking him to direct an episode of "Freaks and Geeks." Mottola passed. But by the time Apatow called back, inviting Mottola to direct the half-hour comedy "Undeclared," the film had fallen apart. Mottola moved from New York to Los Angeles and directed several episodes of "Undeclared," which starred Seth Rogen. After attending a table reading of Rogen's script for "Superbad," Mottola told him that if he and Apatow ever decided to make the movie, he wanted to direct. "Something just clicked in my mind, that there was a way to do it that wouldn't feel exactly like all the other teen comedies being made," he said. "I felt like I had this secret key to making it work."

Mottola, who also directed episodes of "Arrested Development" and HBO's "The Comeback," was consistently getting offers to direct studio pictures. "I was working on hip TV shows, so that made me hip-comedy guy, but that unfortunately translated to a lot of really bad romantic comedies that would come my way." When he finally said yes to "Superbad," he said, "I think my agents were a little surprised."

Ted Hope, who with Anne Carey produced "Adventureland," said that while "some reviewers have been saying that Greg's the John Hughes of his time, we always saw him much more in the Cameron Crowe vein. He is a deeply humanist writer and director. He sees the soul in all his characters."

Mottola's next film is a road comedy called "Paul," written by Simon Pegg and Nick Frost ("Shaun of the Dead," "Hot Fuzz"), and he's slated to direct an upcoming Steve Carell project. He's back to being a director-for-hire, but with his really-truly sophomore film finally under his belt, that's okay with him. "If I can have the one-for-the-studio, one-for-the-indies kind of career like my friend Steven Soderbergh, I would be extremely happy," Mottola said. "You know, people think I only do young adult movies, which is odd. We just showed 'The Daytrippers' at the Museum of the Moving Image, and I thought, 'Wow, I used to make movies with adults! And I will do that again!' "