"I am...McLovin"

Rating: 6/10 (27 September 2007)

"Superbad" is not a bad film, but there are just certain things in the film that stop it from becoming a "comedy classic" as it has been labelled by many people.
It is more of a gross-out than a comedy for one thing. Dancing with a girl at a party on her period, the evidence of which is left on your trouser leg, cannot be considered funny at any level. It's just wrong. The funniest set piece of the film comes when Fogle, a geeky kid, gets fake i.d to buy booze for the last party the three protagonists will spend together before going off to college. Instead of using a normal name like many people would, he changes his to "McLovin", neither first or last name, just "McLovin".
Continuing in the mould of "40 Year Old Virgin" and "Knocked Up", "Superbad" has an idiosyncratic humour, scripted by and starring Seth Rogen, who also starred in the aforementioned two films. His role as a daft cop, alongside fellow cop played by Bill Hader is a funny double act, but starts to where thin towards the end of the film's nearly 2 hour running time.
This film's i.q is the same as the average shoe size, which is not a bad thing(in small doses, I can't believe I've used the words protagonist and idiosyncratic in my comment on it!), but it jarrs when it begins to take the moral high-ground come the end. It desperately searches for a change from the slapstick, chaotic tone it successfully establishes in the first hour and a half. The final half hour is slow and quite honestly, not that funny.
All in all, "Superbad" is not a superbad film. It's a perfectly fine source of entertainment all be it slightly too self-indulgent and aware of its moral responsibility.
*** out of *****