Wick's Review

Summary - Perfect 5.0

Superbad is still super funny, super filthy and super telling. That last is somewhat inadvertent, but the movie is more than just a lens into the fetid minds of unsupervised boys. The porn-powered self-absorption it observes among millennials dates it as Origin of the Snowflakes. “Just how I feel” justifies everything.

Sociological observations aside, Superbad is a hall-of-fame high school movie that slays comedically. Plus it launched several notable careers, including Jonah Hill’s, even as it kicked Seth Rogen’s into overdrive.

Brilliant from the opening credits, where white suburban boys dance in silhouette to the super-funky Too Hot to Stop, the movie uses that very funny cultural appropriation to declare its transgressive ambition.

The plot revolves around a superficially simple quest. During the final two weeks of high school, two seniors vow to bring booze to a cool-kids party. It’s not only their ticket into the bash, but into getting lucky with their respective crushes. Of course, everything goes hilariously wrong. Can you say McLovin?

McLovin and much more make Superbad a benchmark movie. Absurdly entertaining, it reveals more than it should and even more than it intended. About that last, we’re living with those pathologies to this day.

Acting - Really Great 4.5

Stars were born in Superbad.

• Jonah Hill became an unlikely moviestar: endomorphic, annoying and selfish, he honed his young-Larry-David shtick as the dickhead in charge of the plot’s crazy quest. Major stardom ensued.
• Michael Cera became another unlikely movistar after debuting in Superbad, though his career hasn’t proven as resilient as Hill’s. Anyway, Cera’s gentle pleaser works especially well in this role, as it did in Juno and others.
• Christopher Mintz-Plasse became perhaps the most unlikely moviestar of them all as Fogell/“McLovin”, virtually cornering the market on twerpy jerks.
• Emma Stone became a classic moviestar after debuting opposite Hill in Superbad. Her trademark wry intelligence, smoky voice and retro look worked as a level-headed high schooler, just as it has in countless big movies since.

Strong Supporting Cast

• Bill Hader & Seth Rogen as knuckle-headed cops: Rogen, the movie’s cowriter, hilariously joins up with the reliably funny Hader to spoof society’s ultimate authority figures.
• Martha MacIsaac charms as a sweet girl who lucks out in her choice of hookups.
• Joe Lo Truglio is deceitfully funny as a low-life who helps the boys procure booze.
• Dave Franco cameos briefly as a gym-class soccer player.
• Carla Gallo is sexy and then nasty as “Period Blood Girl”.
• Cameos: David Krumholtz, Martin Starr, Lauren Miller (Mrs. Seth Rogen)

Film - Perfect 5.0

Superbad follows three unsupervised upper-middle-class dudes on the loose during their final two weeks of high school. Two just got into Dartmouth, the other one didn’t. All hell breaks loose.

Judd Apatow didn’t write or direct Superbad, just produced it, but it has all his hallmarks, especially the spoofing of bad behavior by not-so-bad people. Those people are millennials who exist outside any form of disciplined value system. No religion, just desire. No responsibility for anyone but themselves.

Edge - Sordid 2.9

Men and boys at their worst

Reality - Glib 1.8

Circumstantial surrealism aside, Superbad tells truths about society, technology and more.

• The boys are stupidly gallant to the girls they like, though their intents are most ungallant.
• A loser drags down his upstanding buddy. He’s also pathologically self-centered, where the other two boys are merely age-appropriate self-centered.
• Swearing at the phone for giving a bad connection, while his girlfriend thinks he’s swearing at her.
• Wanna know why husbands talk the way they do? Watch Cera’s character.
• Millennials are the first generation in human history who were sexually weaned on internet porn. Superbad suggests how that distorts their outlook – boys especially – on love and life.
• The widely reported explosion in campus rape is not surprising given the college-wannabe party in Superbad. Girls get loaded and end up in regretful sex, at the least. At the most, they get raped. Everyone is loaded nearly all the time this happens. Is that an excuse? No, but it is the reality.

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