Not super, not bad, not you'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll hurl status.

Rating: 6/10 (22 August 2007)

I hate to rain on the parade of the 'funniest movie ever' but Superbad wasn't bad, but is not a laugh riot. Some teen age insights amid the top the next one gross sexual joke, but a ridiculous cop buddy Supertroopers laid on American Pie-dom does not a classic make. As a guy I laughed a lot, not the kind of lost it at the movies laughs of a Dumb and Dumber or the building snort by snort belly laughs of The Big Lebowski, and not the continuous tumescence of Animal House. I also wondered what any girl might think of the whole premise of the plot or the grossness of the jokes? There weren't any girls in the audience I sat with, mostly guys in their twenties, some high schoolers, and amid the group there wasn't the universal hysteria the reviews posted seem to suggest. The major paid movie reviewers waxed rhapsodically about this movie but having spent many an afternoon sitting with movie reviewers in various screening rooms, they are blood brothers (and seem the types to giggle over menstrual blood) to Seth, Evan, and Fogel. Seth is given to many adult like rages, Fogel too many moments of unbelievable nerdiness, the cops too many similar scenes of 'just wanting to have fun, for this movie to move the average movie goer or to cause one to get beyond a laugh to a laugh riot. Evan, on the other hand, is allowed to make his character in the movie a real person. More universal, less nerdy or fake aggressive. There was something in his voice, something that we all were in high school that is the best thing in the movie.
It must not have been chance but clear thinking that did not include any of the ridiculous cop buddy sub plot in the previews. The cop stuff is like the energizer bunny: it goes on and on and on for increasingly hard to get laughs out of increasingly ludicrous situations.
So, six stars out of ten, and not even in the top ten of teenage gross out sex movies or cop buddy movies.