MOVIE REVIEW FUN: Superbad

The past few decades have been graced with high school coming-of-age movies like American Pie, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, and The Breakfast Club. This summer welcome Superbad to the American Adolescent Debauchery Canon from the guys that brought you Knocked Up. The film features a cast of run-of-the-mill dweebs finding themselves in spectacular situations. It's the Dude Where's My Car of the new millennium, only a lot better, and less bad.

Not-so-cool-dudes Evan(Michael Cera), Seth(Jonah Hill), and Fogell(Christopher Mintze-Plasse) are totally stoked when they're invited to a party by an out-of-their-league-girl, but her expectations for them to bring the booze proove too high with their friend's new, shoddy, fake ID saying he's a 25 year-old Hawaiian with a one-name moniker, "McLovin". Things go awry in during the most honest of illegal-alcohol-purchase-performances, and we're introduced to two quirky/lazy police officers (played by Seth Rogan and SNL's Bill Hader). Charmed by McLovin's ability to hold his own, these two representatives of suburban law enforcement convince Fogell/McLovin to spend a large chunk of his evening running red lights, shooting guns, and drinking beer.

But while Fogell is playing games with cops, Seth and Evan are whisked to a party where they're forced to dance, forced to sing, and when our two favorite cops break up the place, they're forced to run to the fiesta of their initial intent: the one with the drunk girls that will
(hopefully) put any pocketed condoms and spermicidal lube to use. We've all been there, right?

It's the honesty of the cast that brings to life the quirky and
ultimately familiar humor in the script. In response to a girl's drunk exclamation that "she's so wet" a chagrined and intoxicated Evan replies "I learned that would happen in Health Class." Evan's straight-faced rambling character is certainly reminiscent of Michael Cera's former role on Arrested Development as "George Michael", and Fogell is brought to life in a breakout performance by Christopher Mintze-Plasse. Whereas films like Napoleon Dynamite and American Pie have launched gaggles of no-name-actors' careers, Superbad will do the
same.

We're taken by these characters because, in so many ways, a lot of us in our high-school-days were these characters. No one wanted to sit alone at the lunch table, bake a cake without a partner in homeconomics, or be constantly reminded of a most-embarrassing-elementary -school-moment. I'm sure we all questioned the necessity of our required elective courses, and/or the point of going to class when struck with a bad case of senioritis. Most
importantly, we all feared the big life-change of college transition, the new distances between close friends, and the thought of living with strangers. High School coming-of age-movies speak a language embedded with wafts of chalk and long-lost memories, or slice-of-life problems that today's teenagers want to see worked out. More reason as to why this movie is awesome.

Superbad is a high school movie without cheerleaders, band-campers, jocks, punks, mean girls, talent shows and drama geeks. In other movies, these social stereotypes are made out to be cliques of monsters, making high school a scary and worrisome place for a new student to try and fit in, or for a group of kids in detention pretending to get along. Though Superbad certainly tips its hat to other films in the American Adolescent Debauchery Canon, it's a lot of fun, a lot of good, and a lot things we'd never expect from a high school comedy. There's still the sex, raunch, vulgar language, and underage boozing, but nothing too bold or offensive. Superbad is "supergood" in its embrace of the "average" high schooler and, in a sense, it's audience.