A Tame Dirty Comedy

Rating: 7/10 (27 December 2007)

Boys behaving badly is the subject of this pretty funny adolescent comedy. Three uber-geeky high school seniors are invited to a party they otherwise would never get invited to because they promise to bring the booze. Their struggles to actually get to the party comprise most of the film's action. End of story.
"Superbad" is plenty naughty, but it's actually fairly tame for the genre. Even "Porky's" from more than twenty years ago felt more adult than this movie. The film's R rating comes almost entirely from its rough language, of which there is plenty, but there's little else to offend. This comedy is in the tradition of the recent spate of "sensitive" adult comedies like "The 40-Year-Old-Virgin" and "Knocked Up" in which guys learn to treat women with respect and maturity is something other than a four-letter word.
I had two major complaints with "Superbad": one is that I can't stand the actor Jonah Hill, who unfortunately gets the bulk of the movie's screen time; the other is that I'm also tiring quickly of Seth Rogan, and his and Bill Hader's antics as the most irresponsible cops in the world provide the movie with its least funny moments, and serve only as a distraction from the much funnier and actually sort of sweet story about three teenagers' coming of age.
Grade: B+