SUPERBAD Movie Review

SUPERBAD
**1/2 out of 4
Rated R
Directed by Greg Mottola

Understand, please, that it is truly killing me that I can’t recommend SUPERBAD… KILLING me. There’s so much funny stuff in this movie. What’s stopping me?

Simple math.

This film boasts three teenage male leads. One of them is very sweet and very funny. One of them is absolute comic genius. And the third and final one is BEYOND unfunny. Actually, he’s psychopathic and kinda evil. So the film is functioning at sixty-six percent capacity. That’s a D… Or two and a half stars.

SUPERBAD is the latest pretender to the AMERICAN GRAFFITTI/DAZED AND CONFUSED throne. It stars Michael Cera and Jonah Hill as Evan and Seth, two kids on the cusp of graduating High School whose primary mission in life is NOT to go to college virgins. They get invited to Jules’ (Emma Stone) party one Friday night on the proviso that they get booze for the proceedings. They don’t have a fake ID, but their friend Fogell (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) does.

Funny story about that ID…

Anyway, the ensuing two hours of screentime (making it the LAWRENCE OF ARABIA of teen sex comedies) is devoted to their wacky adventures getting to the party, including stick-ups, drugs, the cops, menstruation, pictures of phalluses, Home-Ec class, homeless people and leaked security tapes. Funny how many of this kind of film owe so much to Homer’s THE ODYSSEY. It’s just one damn thing after another.

Left all on its lonesome, with no detractions whatsoever, the adventures of Fogell (or “McLovin,” if you’re nasty) and the cops that are driving him around would be worth the price of admission in and of itself. The officers are played by Seth Rogen and Bill Hader and the three boast the best pure comic performances of the year. Hader is given his meatiest role yet, after the embarrassing HOT ROD a couple weeks ago. His performance is alive in a way that’s funny and just plain liberating. Rogen acts as a very funny anchor for him, and I’d pay to see these two working off each other in another movie down the road.

But I’m forgetting the astounding Fogell. Written by Rogen and co-writer Evan Goldberg and played in a starmaking performance by Mintz-Plasse, Fogell is a whole and unique character almost without precedent. Sure, you may have seen nerdy characters in films before. Here is their retroactive prototype. The difference between Fogell and the legions of miscreants spawned by the REVENGE OF THE NERDS movies, is that Fogell is not the least bit aware that he’s so pathetic. In fact, he REVELS in it. So much that this hopeless geek becomes THE COOLEST MAN ALIVE! And these three take us on the teen version of Scorsese’s AFTER HOURS.

GO, MCLOVIN!

When we’re NOT with these three, however, we’re stuck with Evan and Seth.

Cera as Evan, actually, I can’t complain about. He has a gift for improv (or making his lines SOUND like improv) and the scene where he’s asked to sing for a bunch of cokeheads had me on the floor. But he acts as straight-man and cipher and he’s very good at it. In fact with his scenes, SUPERBAD dodges being just another teen comedy, because he’s the geek the girls talk to. Because they talk to him, they reveal themselves as actual characters and not the two degrees of “slut” and “prude.” I’ve rarely seen a movie at this level where the women were just as horny as the guys, but in a realistic and plausible way.

And here comes Jonah Hill, to grind our movie to a screeching halt.

The character of Seth is an annoying bore without a single redeeming characteristic to call his own. He’s grating, loud-mouthed and he’s just a chore to be around. It’s one thing to be awkward around girls, but a completely different thing altogether when awkwardness turns into hatred and fear. And yes, I DID know guys like Seth in High School. I avoided them then, and I avoid them now.

It doesn’t add to matters that he’s played by Jonah Hill, who shouts every last line and has dead, cold, serial killer eyes. Jesus Harold Christ, it’s like someone shrank Tom Sizemore. Every time we went from Fogell or Evan back to Seth I was… Sad. That sadness grew into resentment over time.

That fat fuck ruined my movie…