Movie Review: Superbad

by Todd Maternowski

For a huge chunk of human history, our art and sculpture have been dominated by one thing, and one thing only: sex. Whether it's prehistoric images of naked fertility goddesses, or Roman murals depicting passionless copulation, to Rabelais' accounts of drunken parties, most human art in any culture centered around homo sapiens's various takes on our biological imperative. Somehow, over the past few centuries, that was lost: made taboo, scorned as disgusting, and repressed into the underworld of the subconscious and immoral.

Fortunately, in the last decade or so we've had some artists --particularly in film-- take that pre-historic artistic urge, and explore the bleeping bleepity bleep out of it. In Superbad, writers Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg intentionally cross 'the line' at every opportunity, seemingly seeking out our most taboo subjects and smashing them with the iron fist of hormone-driven teenage awkwardness. The result is an incredibly funny movie, and an instant cult classic.

Superbad is about two high school friends, about to leave for different colleges, who are on a one-night quest to get laid. If that doesn't sound familiar, you probably haven't seen any teen comedies of the past 30 years, and also somehow avoided high school. The movie was written by comic genius Seth Rogen (Knocked Up, 40 Year Old Virgin, The Ali G Show) and Evan Goldberg, who began writing the script to this movie when they were 13 years old, using their own names and personalities. The two protagonists are, shockingly, named Seth and Evan: Seth, played by Jonah Hill, is the foul-mouthed, foul-minded and self-absorbed brute obsessed with sex, while Evan, played by Michael Sera, is the too-sweet, too-intellectual and painfully awkward college-bound kid terrified of social interaction.

It's a perfect Odd Couple-esque set-up, and the two main actors Hill and Cera don't disappoint, with some amazing on-screen chemistry that is both realistic and over-the-top hilarious. Seth/Hill is a bull in a china shop, chewing up every scene he's in with his ultra-vulgar charm and physical comedy. Evan/Cera, who cut his teeth on the terrific show Arrested Development, is the Master of Awkward Humiliation, taking any scene he's in to a new level of teenage uneasiness with stumbling, painful dialogue and priceless facial expressions.

The film is stolen, however, by first-time actor (and actual teenager) Christopher Mintz-Plasse, who plays the role of Fogell, a.k.a. "McLovin". The completely clueless-yet-impossibly-cool McLovin provides fantastic comic relief to the already-hilarious movie, especially in his exploits with two mostly-incompetent police officers, played by Rogen himself and longtime SNL member Bill Hader.

The plot of the movie is simple enough: the three kids go on a quest to procur alcohol, get to a high school party and get laid. The plot structure of the film similar to the cult movies of the early 90s, Dazed and Confused & Empire Records, which take place over one full day & night, with a lesson-learned epilogue the next morning.

Despite the groin-melting vulgarity, ultimately Superbad is a sweet, good-natured movie about love, friendship and successful relationships with members of the opposite sex (also for that reason, much like Knocked Up and 40 Year Old Virgin, terrific date movies), without falling into the soulless chick-flick trap of two-dimensionality and boredom. With a terrific funk and R&B soundtrack --including a title track performed by none other than the legendary funkmaster himself, Bootsy Collins-- Superbad may get a little sugary at parts, but the film never strays from its gut-busting edginess. For those of you who are terrified of your own genitalia and pass out when the F-word is uttered on the big screen, this is not your movie. For the rest of us, Superbad should be required viewing, a too-rare combination of top-notch comedy writing with the Wisdom of the Ancients that puts the term "teen sex comedy" to shame.