Superbad (2007) is one of those bawdy teen comedies that the kids seem to like nowadays. (Excuse me for a second while I fetch my old man slippers.) I liked Michael Cera in this. The movie itself? Not so much. Essentially, two geeks (Cera and Jonah Hill) are entrusted by hot girls to acquire booze for a house party. If they succeed, they get laid…or so they think. Naturally, things don’t go exactly as planned. Hilarity ensues.
Or, maybe not. Outside of Cera’s affable, wishy-washy charm and a brilliantly chosen 1970s funk soundtrack, Superbad did very little to push my buttons. The Jonah Hill character was excruciatingly unlikeable, and I found the supposedly charming, dumbass “boys will be boys” behavior just…depressing. To me, it’s like all the worst aspects of high school exaggerated. It’s not without the occasional laugh-out-loud moment — usually Cera’s improv-sounding deliveries, and also some good bits from the duo’s ubergeek friend McLovin (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) and his cop buddies (especially Bill Hader). But ultimately, at its best this one didn’t get much better than mildly amusing for me, and the rest of the time it just struck me as unpleasant.
I did like McLovin. And the final subtle suggestion that all the boys really need to find true love is to admit their undying love for one another. But, yeah, it was uneven as hell.
Yeah, it does try for a message, I guess…although it is a bit tiresome to see films whose characters are permitted to act atrociously throughout, provided they redeem themselves at the end. To me it almost sends a message, that you can do whatever you want, so long as you apologize later…