Running time: 114 minutes
Starring: Jonah Hill, Michael Cera, Seth Rogen, Bill Hader, Christopher Mintz-Plasse
Rating 6 out of 10
The coming of age movie is a perennial favourite of American cinema with such classics as American Graffiti and The Last Picture Show, but Superbad is more in the vein of a rather more outlandish example of the genre: Animal House. Filled with raucous, bawdy humour, it doesn't confine itself to the realism adopted by Lucas and Bogdanovich. Instead it freely ventures in to the realm of the absurd as it deals with the fear and trepidation of leaving friends, family and home and heading off to college.
Superbad also explores another central obsession with adolescents: sex. Focusing on two friends, the loud-mouthed, brash Seth (Jonah Hill) and quieter, sensitive Evan (Michael Cira), it unwinds over the course of one of their last days at high school as they desperately try to get laid. Superbad reunites a number of the key figures involved with Knocked Up and The 40 Year Old Virgin, which is the best indicator of its level of humour. Subtle and sophisticated it is not, but amusing it is, though not to the same degree as the previous films.
The original script was written by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg when they were 13 year-old kids growing up together in Vancouver. After Rogen broke in as an actor with the TV series Freaks And Geeks, the pair reunited as writers on Da Ali G Show. Inevitably for something written by teens, the humour in Superbad is sophomoric, something youngsters have an insatiable appetite for.
The writers' affinity for the characters was such that the two main characters bear their names. Seth and Evan are desperate to lose their virginity before leaving high school, but time is running out. Evan's awkward attempts to connect with schoolmate Becca (Martha Maclsaac) have been as fruitless as Seth's to impress Jules (Emma Stone). So when Jules holds a party and entrusts Seth to provide the drink, both boys set about a task that they hope will lead to them finally breaking their duck. To help them procure the illicit alcohol, they enroll uber-nerd Fogell (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) who has secured a fake ID in the unlikely pseudonym of McLovin. And, as they say, hilarity ensues . . . much of it involving two incompetent police officers, played by Bill Hader and Seth Rogen.
Superbad contains moments of unadulterated sentimentality as Seth and Evan, fearful of the separation and uncertainty ahead, express their affection for one another, but the shift of tone jars with the film's cruder tone. And though it is undoubtedly funny in places, the repetitive nature of the humour becomes tiresome. In the end Superbad is neither super, nor bad, just okay.
Kevin Murphy
Superbad also explores another central obsession with adolescents: sex. Focusing on two friends, the loud-mouthed, brash Seth (Jonah Hill) and quieter, sensitive Evan (Michael Cira), it unwinds over the course of one of their last days at high school as they desperately try to get laid. Superbad reunites a number of the key figures involved with Knocked Up and The 40 Year Old Virgin, which is the best indicator of its level of humour. Subtle and sophisticated it is not, but amusing it is, though not to the same degree as the previous films.
The original script was written by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg when they were 13 year-old kids growing up together in Vancouver. After Rogen broke in as an actor with the TV series Freaks And Geeks, the pair reunited as writers on Da Ali G Show. Inevitably for something written by teens, the humour in Superbad is sophomoric, something youngsters have an insatiable appetite for.
The writers' affinity for the characters was such that the two main characters bear their names. Seth and Evan are desperate to lose their virginity before leaving high school, but time is running out. Evan's awkward attempts to connect with schoolmate Becca (Martha Maclsaac) have been as fruitless as Seth's to impress Jules (Emma Stone). So when Jules holds a party and entrusts Seth to provide the drink, both boys set about a task that they hope will lead to them finally breaking their duck. To help them procure the illicit alcohol, they enroll uber-nerd Fogell (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) who has secured a fake ID in the unlikely pseudonym of McLovin. And, as they say, hilarity ensues . . . much of it involving two incompetent police officers, played by Bill Hader and Seth Rogen.
Superbad contains moments of unadulterated sentimentality as Seth and Evan, fearful of the separation and uncertainty ahead, express their affection for one another, but the shift of tone jars with the film's cruder tone. And though it is undoubtedly funny in places, the repetitive nature of the humour becomes tiresome. In the end Superbad is neither super, nor bad, just okay.
Kevin Murphy
