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Ah, August…. It’s the time when the kids start getting a little bit bored with the whole summer thing…when Moms rejoice at the sight of the Back-to-School aisles at Target…when studios run out of summer blockbusters and pull out the lazy slacker comedies like Hot Rod and Superbad…and when film critics tend to drink a little more heavily, in an attempt to dull the pain just a little bit. Actually, though, in the case of movies like Superbad, it almost seems wrong to show up to the theater completely sober. Rude, even. Because Superbad and booze just go hand-in-hand.
Superbad is an outrageous teen comedy that tells the story of three high school losers on a quest for a little bit of fun before they head off to college. Seth (Jonah Hill) and Evan (Michael Cera) have been best friends forever, but Seth couldn’t get into Dartmouth—so Evan and their loser friend, Fogell (Christopher Mintz-Plasse), will be heading off without him. Before they begin their wild-and-crazy college years, though, they need a little practice—so they decide to head out to a party to get drunk and get laid. All they need to do is supply the booze and wait for the girls to get drunk enough to come to them. Fortunately, Fogell is in the process of getting a fake ID—so everything should go according to plan.
Of course, nothing goes as they’d hoped—and when Fogell has a run-in with the cops, Seth and Evan figure it’s because of his ridiculous ID (the one that claims he’s a 25-year-old Hawaiian named McLovin), so they take off to find another way to get the booze.
Superbad is the latest in the long line of crass teen comedies that have sprung up since 1999’s American Pie. The idea is basically the same: a bunch of high school guys are desperate to get laid before graduating and heading off to college. Throw in a plethora of crude jokes that are sure to make most members of the audience extremely uncomfortable, and you’ve got yourself another formula teen comedy.
While the majority of the laughs are gross-funny or painfully-uncomfortable-funny, however, at times, Superbad is occasionally genuinely funny. The story involving Hill and Cera gets a bit old after a while, but newcomer Mintz-Plasse makes up for the stale, awkward moments with his perfectly hilarious delivery. And McLovin’s bizarre misadventures with Officers Slater and Michaels (Bill Hader and writer/producer Seth Rogen) are the funniest scenes in the movie.
If you are—or ever have been—a geeky high school (or college) guy who just wanted to go out, get drunk, and get laid, you’ll find plenty here to keep you more than mildly amused. But I’m not a geeky high school guy. So while I did find that Superbad is really funny at times—definitely much funnier than Hot Rod—I also found that the same old formula gets a bit old. Hill and Cera’s characters don’t really offer anything really new and exciting, and the jokes sometimes cross the line between crudely funny and just plain uncomfortable. So if you’re a guy, feel free to see Superbad with your old high school buddies (preferably after several pitchers at the bar next to the theater). But it’s probably best to leave the girls at home.
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