Hilarious, but a little Cliché and Lazy

Rating: 7/10 (22 August 2007)

I'm sorry to report that Superbad is a clear step backward in terms of character and story from Apatow's previous stuff, although, admittedly, it was only produced by him, not directed. Superbad is one big long hilarious sex joke from beginning to end, but once all the thin layers are stripped away, there's not much left to distinguish it from other films of its ilk.
Jonah Hill is Seth and Michael Cena is Evan, two high school seniors who are on their last week of school and want to go out with a bang. So they enlist the aid of a friend who would make the nerdiest of nerds look like Brad Pitt - Fogell, played squeakily excellently by newcomer Christopher Mintz-Plasse.He has just purchased a fake ID, and the plan of the three is to use it to buy alcohol for a party so they can get girls drunk and sleep with them. Fogell goes to the liquor store and is knocked out by a thief (whom we never see again), causing the clerk to call the police in to look for the robber. Can you say, "contrived plot point?"
Aside from the three main characters, everyone else is a tired stereotype, from the stupid cops of Seth Rogen and Bill Hader (played with enough pizazz to overshadow their cliché-ness), to the naïve liquor store counter girl who accepts a clearly highly suspicious fake ID, to the girls merely existing so that the main characters can (or cannot) have sex with them. True, most of these are laugh-out-loud hilarious, but for me that didn't overshadow how uncreative they were. In conjunction with this qualm of mine, I also didn't appreciate how everybody except the three main characters seemed to have lost their brains on the way to their parts. Films like "Virgin" and "Knocked Up" succeeded because all the characters were three-dimensional real people, not stereotypes. Neither Jonah Hill nor Michael Cena carry enough charisma and clout to make us believe these are actually real people. Jonah Hill plays the exact same part he played in Knocked Up, only without the drugs. On top of all this, the movie is false in its claims to authentically portray the boy high school experience because of how, suspiciously, the entire high school is populated by 25-year old drop dead gorgeous women. Much has also been said about the F-word being dropped at least three times a minute  but so what? What movie doesn't have the F-word these days? This doesn't make it good. It's not like it was some kind of huge risk for them to use it. This isn't the 70's people, it's the 21st century, and when the F-word is used a lot it's not some reason to be impressed by bravura film-making.
Finally, my biggest beef with the movie is its faux brotherhood undertones. Yes, Hill and Cena do share wonderful chemistry, but the "conflict" between them (each of them are going to separate colleges at the end of the year) is barely mentioned three or four times, and it seems merely added for the purposes of giving the film an Apatowsian flair. It's competently done, of course.It's nowhere near as developed as the emotional heart of Apatow's previous two theatrical outings, where the drama was sewn into the whole in such a way that if you removed it, the entire thing would fall apart. In Superbad, though, it seems more of an extra doohickey than something that was needed.
Despite all my criticisms, I'm giving this movie a good recommendation simply because of how hilarious it is. Both Hill and Cena hit each comedic note perfectly, and Hader and Rogen as the cliché cops add just the right amount of ridiculousness to make their inclusion forgivable. The most hilarious aspect of the movie comes in the running joke that Fogell changed his name to McLovin when he bought a fake ID. This joke runs throughout, but through intelligent script-writing it never loses steam and always draws a hearty belly laugh. The McLovin' joke alone is worth the entire price of admission, and in a movie with literally a laugh-a-minute, that's saying something. Some moments in the movie also (probably purposefully) recall classics like American Pie, which really helps the movie's appeal, because it throws into contrast how lacking American Pie's comedy is in relation to Superbad's. The writing is simply much more talented and does a heck of a lot more with the material. I couldn't stop laughing throughout the entire thing, and though at the end of the day it lacked a certain heart and soul that prevents me from giving it an extremely high rating, it does bring the laughs.
Perhaps I'm being a little too unfair on Superbad. After all, the director is some guy named Greg Mottola who must be feeling like the luckiest guy in the world right now, with the reigning king of R-rated comedy producing his flick. Why should I place the burden of Apatow's success upon this filmmaker's shoulders? The reason is that Superbad was billed as "from the guys who brought you Talladega Nights and The 40-Year Old Virgin." With a title like that, it's obviously wanting very badly to be the next Knocked Up. But if Apatow wasn't attached to the project, you can bet it wouldn't be half as successful, and probably even lower in the critical ratings, too. It was a clever advertising campaign, to be sure, but it only causes me to be suspicious if Superbad actually has any inherent value. For now, I'm giving it the benefit of the doubt  it's not as good as the other two hilarious comedies of the summer, Knocked Up and The Simpsons Movie, but it is a great fun-filled teen sex comedy romp that is still above average.