Superbad has the feeling of being absolutely effortless

Rating: 4/10 (20 August 2007)

Superbad reviewed by Samuel Osborn
Like Knocked Up and The 40 Year Old Virgin, Superbad has the feeling of being absolutely effortless. It's a Judd Apatow requirement maybe that no joke should be choked out by its characters. Honesty and chemistry seem to be the only ingredients to his enormously profitable formula. He sits in the Producer's chair for Superbad, letting Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg use their ten year old script and Greg Mottola direct it. But Apatow has ushered in his own era of comic productions in Hollywood. They're low-brow in their premises but entirely human and wholly sincere in their execution. Superbad is no different, pulling focus on two outcasts trying to wiggle somehow into the exclusive social hierarchy of high school before they scoot off into their separate lives at college. Girls are their only concern and like the boys of American Pie, Seth and Evan are looking only to get laid.
The simplest way to explain Seth and Evan (Jonah Hill and Michael Cera) is to say they would have no problem getting along with the stoner Ben from Knocked Up and the sexless Andy from The 40 Year Old Virgin. Molded too awkwardly to exist normally in the social world, these characters are forced into situations far outside their comfort zone. Here Seth, Evan, and their twice nerdy friend Fogell (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) are asked to score the alcohol for a party that evening at Jule's house, Seth's big crush. Depending on the fact that Fogell somehow has obtained a phony I.D., they boast that they can buy the girls whatever they want; that they do this thing all the time when, in fact, they've never set foot in a liquor store. It doesn't help that Fogell's I.D. claims that he's a 25 year old Hawaiian named McLovin. And as any teenager knows, finding alcohol is never a simple task.
The boys' shenanigans drive them deep into the night and late to the party, but glorious in their possession of alcohol for their underaged peers. These peers, thankfully, actually look like their peers. By this I mean that the extras and peripheral characters look believably under the age of twenty-one. I'm so tired of muscled, bearded thirty-somethings posing as bodacious high schoolers. The students here are entirely convincing as real live students.
The funny thing about effortlessness is that rarely is it in fact effortless. But the effort involved is so well masked that we accept it as something easy and natural. Like the previous Apatow concoctions, casting and scripting are the main players; minutely calibrated to bubble up a critical mass of on-screen chemistry for the actors to play with. Jonah Hill from previous Apatow films and Michael Cera of "Arrested Development" fame are superb choices as Seth and Evan. Director Greg Mottola handles Mr. Rogen and Mr. Golberg's script adroitly and manages to funkify what could have been a pop-music mood, bringing in music from the Bar-Kays, Rick James, Curtis Mayfield and The Roots. The result is a swell continuation of Apatow and his crew's success.
Samuel Osborn