Superbad

Reviewed By Rich Drees

     If comedy has a golden boy of the moment, it would be Seth Rogen. After a few small roles, Rogen burst onto the movie scene with a memorable supporting performance in 2005’s The 40 Year Old Virgin. He followed that up with a great lead performance in Knocked Up, released just a few months ago. Now, Rogen hits another homerun as co-writer of Superbad, a reinvention of the standard teen sex comedy.

     To say that Seth (Jonah Hill) and Evan (Michael Cera) are not among the popular crowd of their high school would be a bit of an understatement. With graduation looming just a few weeks away, and the prospect of going their separate ways for college, these two life-long friends decide to make a splash in the local social scene by supplying a big end of the year bash with alcohol. Seth also figures that one upside to this plan will be the increased chance that drunk girls will prevail their more physical charms on them. Unfortunately, the success of their plan rests on their even nerdier friend Fogell (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) and a fake ID with the one word name of McLovin.

     Superbad is crude in an almost joyful way, the way that many teens are when testing the boundaries of approaching adulthood. But the film doesn’t revel in raunch for raunch’s sake. It has an emotional core that resonates with anyone who yearned to be accepted in high school that elevates the movie above the standard teen sex comedy fare.

     The three main leads aren’t the typical randy high-schoolers found in average teen sex comedies. They are carefully crafted characters, all of whom are so wrapped up in their own insecurities that they are blinded to the fact that a nice member of the opposite sex would actually be interested in getting to know them. Evan and Seth’s relationship is a co-dependant one. Evan is constantly and selflessly helping out Seth, who takes it all for granted. Much of Seth’s outlook stems from the anger he feels inside over having been the target of bullies all his life. While this fuels his joking personality to some extent, it also causes him to lash out at his friends as well.

    Although technically a “buddy movie,” Jonah Hill clearly walks away with the film. Although we’ve already seen him in two roles this summer where he has played closer to his early 20s age – Knocked Up has him playing one of star Rogen’s stoner friends while he appeared as an overeager Senatorial staff member in Evan Almighty – Hill fully embodies the bundle of hormones and neurosis that is Seth. It is probably the best performance in a comedy all year, rivaled only by Rogen’s in Knocked Up from the start of the summer.

     While the film is unrelentingly funny, mining laughs from the numerous misadventures that Seth, Evan and Fogell have, it has a core that firmly rooted in experiences most can relate to. The screenplay deftly captures that awkward time when adolescent friendships are tested by the introduction of outside influences like members of the opposite sex. The girls that the boys pine after are cute and seem as if they have stepped out of an actual high school, instead of being the overly glamorized Hollywood beauties typically found in teen sex comedies. After Seth and Evan have learned the prerequisite lessons they need to learn, the film ends with a sweet and truthful scene that encapsulates the film’s emotional core. In art there are no coincidences, so it is tempting to read something into the fact that the two lead characters of the movie share the same first names as the screenwriters Rogen and Evan Goldberg. But whether some of the incidents in the film are autobiographical or not, Superbad is a hilarious movie and a great way to wash the bad taste left by many of the bloated blockbusters that were the 2007 summer movie season out of one’s mouth.