A vulgar but funny teen comedy. Mixing the one-crazy-night plots of multiple generations of youth films (American Graffiti, Sixteen Candles) with the geeky-guy-seeks-hot-girl theme of, well, mostly the same movies, this pairs up Jonah Hill and Michael Cera (Arrrested Develpment) as pals on the eve of graduation. The script is co-written by Seth Rogen (Knocked Up), who penned the first draft at age 16 and looks not unlike Hill. Too old to play the lead, Rogen instead plays, along with Bill Hader (of Saturday Night Live), one of the two least competent movie cops ever (and the most over-the-top characters in a movie whose leads actually seem like real teenagers).
The movie earns its R rating for lots of language, underage drinking, and illegal substance use, but doesn’t use raunch as a substitute for humor. Unlike the American Pie movies, the jokes don’t rely on repeatedly humiliating the main characters. They relate to desperate attempts to score some alcohol to bring to the big end-of-school bash, to encounters with the cops, and to male-bonding via insults. The heroes are underdogs in terms of the social heirarchy, but aren’t quite at the bottom, making their potential hook-ups with the school hotties at least semi-plausible. Closer to the bottom would be Christopher Mintz-Plasse, in a memorable debut as the nerdy third wheel transformed via the magic of the fake ID.
Like so many teen comedies, the girls are second-tier characters in a film that is dedicated to the joys of hetero-male friendship. But for a movie about underage sex and drinking, there is a fairly positive social message. If these characters can’t quite yet see women as their peers, the ending suggests that one day they might develop into the sort of characters who would, who could, perhaps, be characters in Knocked Up. Right now they’re just two very funny kids.
IMDB link
reviewed 8/23/07
According to this reviewer, "Superbad" was also supergay.
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