Superbad See it for Michael Cera.
Posted Thursday, Aug. 16, 2007, at 6:57 PM ET
Superbad (Sony) is as lurching, awkward, and dirty-minded as the three horny man-boys at its center—but not, in the end, quite as funny or endearing. In the tradition of the great high-school party movies of the past quarter-century—American Graffiti, Sixteen Candles, Dazed and Confused—it follows its heroes through one embarrassing day's journey into an even more excruciating night. The next morning, they wake up sadder, wiser, and marginally more sexually experienced.
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StumbleUponIt's too bad that the often very funny script, written by Evan Goldberg and Seth Rogen, takes a setup that could have been simplicity itself and piles on so many outlandish twists and grossout set pieces that the relationship at the movie's center—the co-dependent friendship between shy, brainy Evan (Michael Cera) and tubby, sex-crazed Seth (Jonah Hill)—is nearly obscured. Watching Superbad brought out the prude in me—not because of the drinking or the sex or the unbelievably profane dialogue, but because of what can only be described as the movie's moral code.
To put it simply, for nine-tenths of the film, Hill's Seth treats other people—especially his ostensible best buds—like utter crap. After Seth and Evan get invited, against all odds, to a cool girl's party, they persuade Fogell (Christopher Mintz-Plasse), a pencil-necked geek so socially inept that he makes them look like Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin, to buy them a hundred bucks worth of booze with his highly dubious fake ID. Just as Fogell is on the verge of success, his lights get punched out in a liquor-store holdup—and when the cops arrive to investigate, Seth convinces Evan to ditch their pal and round up the alcohol some other way.
As it turns out, Fogell—or "McLovin," the alias he assumes thanks to that fake ID—has a far better night than his friends do. He's taken joyriding by the world's most immature cops (played by Rogen and Bill Hader), while Evan and Seth get stranded at a scary adult party and menaced by an unsavory thug (Kevin Corrigan). Still, I was never able to forgive Hill's character for that initial betrayal. Isn't it part of the outcast code that you stand by your friends in time of need? Seth is meant to be a lovable nut, and he's given many of the movie's funniest lines, but all too often—especially when he browbeats Evan for getting into a better college than he did—he just comes off as a jackass.
Many mishaps and one too many car accidents later, the boys finally meet up at the right party, where they clumsily attempt to court—OK, nail—Becca (Martha MacIsaac) and Jules (Emma Stone). I wish the boys had spent a little less screen time on their way to Jules' party and more at it, because what happens once they get there is both darker and sweeter than anything that's come before. The moment when Evan, alone in a bathroom, glugs from a bottle of retsina to get up the courage to approach Becca is both disgusting and uproarious. And the hideously uncomfortable scene that follows, in which the plastered Becca hurls herself at him and then hurls on him, is like no other sex scene I've seen in a teen movie—even as we watch her make a total fool of herself, the movie somehow leaves her dignity intact.
Critics are making noise about Christopher Mintz-Plasse, an 18-year-old non-actor who was cast after a nationwide search. And while he's perfect as the so-lame-he's-cool Fogell/McLovin, it's Michael Cera (heretofore best known as Jason Bateman's son on Arrested Development) whose comic timing quietly steals the show. While Jonah Hill mugs, babbles, and curses a blue streak, Cera gets laughs from the tiniest bits of physical business: His knock-kneed run is a joke in itself, and a moment when he's scared by the vibration of his own cell phone is inexplicably hilarious.
Though it's directed by Greg Mottola (The Daytrippers), Superbad is clearly riding on the coattails of its producer, the coolest geek in town, Judd Apatow, who finally managed to get the 10-year-old project greenlighted after the success of The 40-Year-Old Virgin. The screenplay was begun when Rogen and Goldberg were still in high school themselves, and that immaturity shows both in the movie's manic energy and in its lack of an overall moral vision. However promising the gifts of Apatow protégés like Rogen and Goldberg, they need to grow into being great screenwriters, and it's going to take more than one night and a bottle of retsina.
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Remarks from the Fray:
The movie's moral code isn't found in Seth but in Evan.
Throughout the movie Evan serves as a foil to Seth's misogynist diatribes when he protests Seth's characterizations of his crush, Becca. As early as the scene in which Seth makes Evan buy him a Red Bull at the gas station, Evan is offended by Seth's lewd praise of Becca's supposed ability to fornicate.
When Seth decides to ditch Fogell with the police in the liquor store, Evan objects multiple times to abandoning him. He simply can't believe that his best friend would abandon the friend who is risking his neck to buy them alcohol and popularity.
At the close of the party when Seth drunkenly comes onto Jules in the hopes that she too is drunk and will make the mistake of sleeping with him (a misogynist idea indeed), Jules professes that she doesn't drink and would much rather hook up with Seth when he is sober. In the end, the message is that girls respect you more when you're yourself and liquid courage is not the key to a successful relationship.
The moral compass is there. It's just often overshadowed by the humor of the movie. After all, nobody came to Superbad to see a morality play.
--mhananel
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I am so sick of these sorry excuses for a "teen movie". They want to catch what 16 Candles, Ferris Bueller's day off, Pretty in Pink, Breakfest Club... had, but instead they are mean spirited, anti male peices of crap, that have no redeaming value. My favorite example of this crap was American Pie, a truely loathsome movie who depicted all the charaters as living for only one thing, sex with a girl, and would screw over anyone, sink to any level, to acheave what the Hollywood instills as the holiest of grails. I am not saying sex is not important to a teen but that is only one of many factors driving teens. I totally agree with the expression of no morals, no heart in these movies, only simple minded drivel
--TJ12121
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With this review you occupy the unenviable position that every movie reviewer finds themselves in once in a while: you are one of the ones who doesn't get it. Maybe you are too far removed to know what teenagers today are actually like, maybe you just don't understand teenage boys and how they relate to each other in particular, but you missed a lot of the nuance in this film.
I take particular issue with your interpretation of Seth. You say, "Seth is meant to be a lovable nut... but all too often...he just comes off as a jackass." Why assume Seth is supposed to be loveable? Knowing the way the Apatow gang tends to approach characters, the tend to care much less about creating characters who are sympathetic than they do characters who are based in reality and are funny.
The character Seth is one of the most realistic portrayals of a certain kind of teenage boy that I have ever seen on film, and one of the implicit messages in the film is that Seth is in fact a jackass. In that respect, I guess you didn't get it wrong in terms of your interpretation but rather in your expectations.
If you didn't like the movie because of its "moral code" I would suggest that you are misreading it. You seem to assume that investment and enjoyment of Seth and Evan's stories indicates some sort of acceptance of and support for their choices. I don't think the filmmakers expected people to like the characters as much as painfully identify with and understand them, and ultimately I think that the filmmakers come down on the side of viewing most of the character's actions (particularly those of Seth) as misguided and stupid.
Ultimately this film shows teenage boys for what they are, if you find that offensive then its fair to say you don't like teenage boys, but at the end of the movie (in what has become a recurring theme in Apatow related films) if there is a message it is that the boys must grow up and put their stupidity behind them, even if its only on step at a time.
--mattcable
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Moral code? Really? Since when does comedy also have to be moral to be considered great? I mean, ripping on your friends is the first rule of adolescent male behavior 101. Sure Superbad is vulgar, crude, and amoral at almost every turn. I would argue that it succeeds because of these qualities and not in spite of them. I am personally thankful that we finally get a movie that isn't playing to the most sensitive of sensibilities and is indeed super bad!
--ricepice
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Apatow and crew have demonstrated great comedic skill, but they're alienating a huge demographic with their denigrating portrayals of asians in their films and television shows. I'm asian, as are many of my friends and colleagues, and we all had a 'WTF?' feeling after watching 'Knocked Up'. Apatow's beginning to get that racist reputation that plagued HIlfiger in the nineties.
--screenjock
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(8/19)