Sometimes it feels like Judd Apatow has taken over the world, or the world of comedy at least. His reign of comic terror started a decade ago in television – with the short-lived but brilliant and highly influential series FREAKS AND GEEKS and UNDECLARED. He slowly created a stable of original and offbeat actors and directors that would eventually blossom into something resembling a Hollywood comedy dynasty. Movies like THE FORTY-YEAR-OLD VIRGIN, KNOCKED UP, SUPERBAD, FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL, PINEAPPLE EXPRESS, and I LOVE YOU MAN have made stars of such Apatow discoveries as Seth Rogen, James Franco, Paul Rudd, Jason Seigel, Jonah Hill. Last month’s Vanity Fair cover of Rogen, Hill, Rudd, and Seigel seems to clinch the deal: Judd Apatow is the king of comedy.

A lesser known Apatow acolyte is Greg Mottola, initially a writer/director for UNDECLARED and eventually the director of the phenomenally successful SUPERBAD. The latter wasn’t only popular, it was also a favorite of many critics, showing up on a number of prominent critics’ Top Ten lists. SUPERBAD is a very funny take on the kind of sexual desperation felt by inexperienced guys on the brink of college. As with most all Apatow films, it’s an R-rated comedy that takes full advantage of its rating to include a heavy dose of raunchiness. But it’s so leavened with good-natured sympathy for its rather pathetic characters, that its crude qualities never overwhelm its humanity. But it’s definitely a tricky balancing act.

Mottola returns to the big screen today with a movie that seriously re-jiggers that balance. ADVENTURELAND revisits the topic of young men grappling with their own virginity but this time, Mottola mostly dispenses with the raunch and focuses on the heart. Not that it gets all mushy or anything. It’s still a strong comedy, but it clearly has a more heartfelt agenda than SUPERBAD, or most other Apatow projects, for that matter.

It may be that the new tone comes from the fact Mottola says the film is based on his own personal experiences working at an amusement park, a park literally named Adventureland. That may or not be relevant, but what is clear beyond dispute is that Mottola’s casting decisions have made this film a very different animal from Apatow’s usual menagerie.

As much as I like the Apatow regulars, it was refreshing to see actors like Jesse Eisenberg and Kirsten Scott play the leads for a change. I’m not saying that Rogen and company couldn’t have pulled it off – it just would have been a very different movie: broader, and probably funnier, but maybe not as poignant.

The last time I saw Eisenberg was in the scorchingly painful and funny THE SQUID AND THE WHALE. In it, he plays a know-it-all kid who’s coping with his parents’ divorce by idolizing his suspect father and treating his mother with the kind of contempt only a teenager in pain can conjure up. It’s a spot-on performance. Eisenberg has an everyman, or everyboy, kind of presence and he knows how to telegraph the insecurity underlying his verbal bravado.

Mottola taps into this quality perfectly in a scene in which Eisenberg’s character tries to have a conversation about relationships with a young woman he’s interested in. He’s earnestly trying to cover up the fact he’s a virgin by going on and on about how he’s recovering from a broken heart just now. But when the woman asks him bluntly – how was the sex? He stumbles around a bit before he hesitantly comes up with – well, she was very sexy? The conversation goes on for a few more uncomfortable minutes but you get the idea. The scene is played for laughs of course, but not guffaws.

The other key casting choice was Kirsten Stewart as Eisenberg’s prospective love interest. TWILIGHT may have had some problems as a movie but none I daresay were due to Stewart’s leading role. She brought a depth to her troubled character in that film that helped to ground the fantasy in a much needed pyschological reality.

In ADVENTURELAND, Stewart may not have to cope with a centuries-old vampire lover, but her Em comes with her own set of griefs, namely a debilitating relationship with a charming and married cad. That she sees the innocent Eisenberg as a possible lifeline out of her present predicament may sound like a cliche but Stewart manages to invest Em with enough depth that it seems more than just a screenwriter’s crutch. Just as Eisenberg is desperate to hide his inexperience, Stewart is desperate to hide her “experience” and those mournful eyes let us know, she’s got it worse.

Ultimately, Stewart and Eisenberg bring such distinctively different sensibilities to this material that I’m wondering if ADVENTURELAND isn’t the first Post-Apatow “Apatow” film. If so, Judd should be proud.