Critique the Critic

I hope I can make this as interesting as possible, as I am sure this it not the first, nor will it be the last review that you read about the movie Superbad. I just feel as though I have to write about this movie, because it is and remains to be one of the funniest movies I have seen in a long time. I have to admit though, going into the theatre, I wasn’t expecting much from it based on what I had heard.

This review by Carina Chocano of the L.A. Times provides some interesting insights into the motives of the directors of the movie.

It was, in fact, the overwhelming bogusness that inspired Seth Rogen to write a comedy with his childhood friend Evan Goldberg, something that would reflect the experiences of real kids like them

Basically what this says is that these two writers were getting sick and tired of the bogus roles that teens are often depicted with. What they wanted was a way to show viewers what life is like for a lot of teens. Now, obviously, nothing this ridiculous happens to anyone all in the same night, but the message is the same. These two kids just wanted to have a good time before going off to college, and what better way to do it then to break several laws, destroy a cop car and get completely wasted at a party with people they never hang out with.

What with everyone so focused on the raunchiness, though, it comes as a complete surprise to find that "Superbad" is in fact a love story. High-strung, impulsive Seth (Hill) and shy, gentle Evan (the gifted Michael Cera) are days away from graduating from high school. It will be their last summer before Evan goes off to college on the opposite coast. Evan has been accepted at Dartmouth, while Seth will be staying behind at a nearby state school.

I would be willing to guess that no one would think of Superbad as a love story. And neither did I. Something about the words “we could be that mistake!” just doesn’t sound too romantic to me. But if you look past all that I suppose you can see the love. Now I’m not saying that everyone’s emotions would be completely in tact after drinking an entire laundry detergent tub full of beer (ewwww), but it does seem a little sweet when Seth starts crying in front of Jules because she won’t “get with him.” And his buddy Evan is a bit of a sweetheart too. He gets really angry after the bottle of gold flake vodka breaks because now he feels like the whole night has been wasted. His whole reason for going to that party was so that he could be with Becca. Luckily for him, she’s drunk enough that she can’t even stand on her own much less care about a stupid bottle of vodka.

As I said before, this movie is one of the funniest I’ve seen in a while, and I usually don’t care that much for “teen sex movies” as my mother has taken to calling them, but this one lived up to it’s name. The story is good enough to make up for the crude jokes and the amount of F-bombs dropped throughout the whole thing.

~PSH

p.s. does anyone actually know how many F-bombs there are??? i'm curious...