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By Beth Accomando off www.rottentomatoes.com

It takes some g**s to call your movie Superbad, but then Judd Apatow has a mega pair of hit comedies called The Forty-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up, so maybe he figures he can live dangerously.

Superbad has opening credits that would seem more appropriate to a 70s film, and its title harkens back to a something like Superfly. But Superbad is set in the present with an almost entirely white cast. Superbad hones in on one night in the lives of Seth, Evan and their friends, much like American Graffiti took to the streets of northern San Francisco for one emblematic night of teen life in 1962. The goal for Seth and Evan is simple: get liquor and bring it to a party thrown by one of the cool kids who’s invited Seth only because he said he had fake I.D. According to Seth, their whole lives depend on the success of this mission. But neither Seth nor Evan have a fake I.D. so they have to rely on their even geekier friend Fogell (Christopher Mintz Plasse), who just scored a fake I.D.

Superbad aims low—in so many ways—and achieves its goals, with a particular emphasis on sex jokes and Seth’s obsession with drawing a certain organ. Superbad’s characters aren’t as sweetly likable as those Apatow creates, but they are redeemed by how much they care for each other. It’s not often that you have friends say they love each other and mean it, especially when they are teenage boys. Superbad looks to the same kind of friendship as Stand By Me, In Stand By Me, the adult looking back on his youth says, “I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve. Jesus, does anyone?” Seth and Evan are those kind of friends but maybe they managed to stay friends into adulthood considering that Rogen and Goldberg penned this script.

Superbad (rated R for pervasive crude and sexual content, strong language, drinking, some drug use and a fantasy/comic violent image, all involving teens–that’s the MPAA’s description but it reads like a promotion for the film) is the perfect crude teen comedy to end the summer on. It’s funny, a little bittersweet and it signals something coming to an end.

 

 

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