I'm telllin' ya ... kids today!

Rating: 8/10 (18 March 2008)

I am 58 years old and when I watch teen comedies it's with a certain curiosity about how it's different today in high school. Despite stereotypes of the Sixties, back then teens wanted to look and act as adult as possible. In the suburbs at least, you dressed sharp. The main thing was to be "cool" and act like you were more sophisticated than you really were. We drank and smoked pot at parties and danced to the Stones and swore and got into arguments about Vietnam. But we were never candid about really personal things, like sex. You were hip, man, but dignified.
A lot has apparently changed. For one thing, the idea of boys taking home economics these days is really amazing. I think "Superbad" is a terrific movie with great dialogue and some uproarious scenes. To wit:
The liquor store fantasy scenes.
Fogel's new license.
The drunk fat kid crashing into Jules.
Fogel's "arrest me" request.
Carrying booze in a detergent jug.
The mom's-cleavage gag. "I am so jealous ..."
I also really liked the shanghaied-to-a-weird-adult-party scene. This was so real-life I was actually startled. Period blood on his pants! And everyone wants to see it! And her boyfriend is outraged! I thought the guys were doomed. And those sing-for-us cokeheads  so bizarre it had to come from someone's real experience. You would never see something like this in a previous teen-sex comedy.
The only letdown was the two cops. Come on. Those scenes in the middle of the movie should have been rewritten or cut. Imagine Fogel protected under the wing of two bad-ass Clint Eastwood types with street scores to settle and you can see where it should have gone.
"Superbad" gets props for being original and taking chances. It also has an essential sweetness that separates it from "American Pie," which is not a bad movie but suffers in comparison to this one. Let's have more, Judd.