“Here’s McLovin, the 25-year-old Hawaiian organ donor” — Superbad is a near-perfect mix of brilliance and stupidity
Michael Cera, playing a variation of his Arrested Development character, and Jonah Hill in alpha nerd mode, are high school students on the verge of graduation and desperate to lose their virginity. An invite to a house party and a fake ID provided by their friend Fogell (newcomer Christopher Mintz-Plasse, who lives up to the ID’s pseudonym, McLovin) provide the opportunity to score some booze and therefore, impress the shit out of the ladies. Almost tangentially, two cops who really shouldn’t be in this movie (but thank God they are) live one night free of responsibility.
Unlike most of its teen comedy brethren, Superbad makes only the briefest attempt to relate to you or your memories of high school on any kind of overarching level. American Pie and every John Hughes movie before Home Alone strived to be coming-of-age stories, declaring their intention to explain the meaning behind sloughing off one’s teenage persona. Cera and Hill stumble past such lofty aspirations. Who cares about the process through which these two become upstanding bank account holders? The bulk of Superbad involves the quest for booze and the ramifications of the house party. Forgoing moralizing or pontificating, the movie plows through as many cock jokes per minute as possible, while its characters bounce from one insane situation to the next. Actor and co-writer Seth Rogen is the William S. Burroughs of cock jokes, possessing an artisanship and inventiveness that brings the movie to life.
While the rest of us got rejected at junior high classes and ducked out of social studies for Slurpees, Rogen co-wrote Superbad at the age of 13 with Evan Goldberg. Instead of attending high school, he starred in the critically acclaimed television series Freaks and Greeks and Undeclared. Really, Rogen has no clue what high school is like. The film reflects this, its idyllic high school is filled with teenage sexpots who lust after nerds. Luckily Rogen’s frame of reference for high school comes from the Judd Apatow shows he worked on rather than Saved by the Bell. Superbad doesn’t define the teenage experience for a generation. Instead, it’s fucking hilarious, and that should be enough.
