Ryan McNeil
Three horny geeks desperately want to get laid. That would be the plot in seven words.
SUPERBAD centres around Seth (Jonah Hill) and Evan (Michael Cera) in their last days of high school. Neither of them want to go to college sexually inexperienced, but neither of them seem to have the first clue as to how to really catch a girl’s eye without alcohol being involved. To help their prospects, they turn to their friend Fogell(newcomer Christopher Mintz-Plasse), owner of the underage holy grail: a fake I.D. Unfortunately, Fogell gets mixed up in a robbery at the liquor store forcing Seth and Evan to fend for themselves, leading to one feeble attempt after another to score alcohol. Meanwhile, the police officers who come to investigate the robbery (Bill Hader and Seth Rogen, who both play for big laughs) take a shining to young Fogell and bring him on a ride-along the rest of the night.
Fogell’s fake I.D. carries just one name:”McLovin”, a simple joke that never seems to get tired(heck, I have an Irish last name, and I’d never heard that one). If that isn’t enough to get you snickering, listening to Seth and Evan talk about sex should do the trick. Seth for instance, wants to be “The Iron Chef of pounding Vag”. I don’t know anyone who talks like that, but then again I’m not seventeen. The story was written by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, and I’m willing to bet that at least half of it is based on their own teen aged experiences.
Both Cera and Hill seem to be on a roll lately. Cera has parlayed his Arrested Development comedic baptism into more awkward innocence here, and brings more of the same to this year’s JUNO. Hill has gone from being “that guy” into a consistent laugh-getter, thanks to his recent dorkish turns in ACCEPTED and KNOCKED UP. Bill
Hader shows you what you’re missing by not watching Saturday Night Live these days (hands up everyone who thinks “SNL has sucked for years”). And Seth Rogen? Comedy’s answer to LeBron James just needed to grow fu-manchu mustache to get laughs this time out.
There are moments where the movie turns into one drawn out dick joke, to lengths that
I won’t describe here. SUPERBAD is one very, very funny movie…but I’m hesitant to really crown it with another one of the glowing reviews it has been getting. True, it has a heart, but for me it is still a movie with heart about a pair of horndogs. Where do we draw the line between amusing movie and classic movie. Fifteen or twenty years from now, will I look at SUPERBAD the same way I look at REVENGE OF THE
NERDS?
The movie is a good one, with laughs galore. Just don’t get too caught up in the hype.