As confused as it is boring

Rating: 2/10 (18 August 2007)

You know what we really hate? It's when movies show all their funny parts before you ever show up to the theater. Nothing makes us feel more like we've wasted our money than showing up for nearly two hours and laughing, almost solely, at those things we laughed at for free. This is the plight of Superbad, which relies on vulgar terminology in outrageous situations to generate laughs.
So what is Superbad? Is it a teen comedy? You wouldn't know it by all the dead time in the theater where none is laughing. The movie drags in several parts, and for me got to the point it was almost unbearable to keep watching. I truly wanted to get up and leave, but I sacrificed another hour and stayed through the whole thing. Had I decided to count the number of times I laughed out loud that didn't include things I saw in the previews, I may have been able to count them on Captain Hook's two hands.
So if it's not a teen comedy, is it a high school, American Pie-ish comedy? Like a raunchy comedy? American Pie shouldn't be downgraded to the level of Superbad. American Pie was smart, truly funny, and bad as it may be, delivered a message. Superbad, on the other hand, has no message. There is no rhyme or reason to the antics that befall the three lovable losers. The friendship scenes seem forced. The relational scenes are so far over the top and outside of reason you just hope and pray teenagers aren't as felony stupid in real life as they are in this movie. So far as raunch goes, it begins and ends with dirty words, that truly have an "in the closet" homosexual feel to them when you consider the wide use of the 'D' word for penis. You're almost waiting for one of the boys to admit they like men more than women.
So, it isn't raunchy, there's no nudity here guys if that's why you're wanting to check it out, and it doesn't have enough laughs to qualify as a comedy, so what is it? It's a very poor attempt at a raunchy high school teen comedy. Seth Rogan and Evan Goldberg have missed the mark completely in this attempt. What we have a junior high script with elementary comedy and an unrealistic view of high school hotties and nerds. You can't even use words like parody, idiomatic, or satirical to describe what they've done here.
All in all, it's an unfunny movie with a few funny because of the language scenes thrown into the mix. The test of a comedy is that you could remove vile language and the movie is still funny. If you remove the vile language from this movie, it's an hour and 54 minutes of silence pictures. Do yourself a favor and wait for the DVD rental.