Superbad is less a movie than a two hour-long gay joke, but it works. I cannot say for sure whether it's Michael Cera's awkwardness, Seth Rogen's boorishness or Jonah Hill's chubbiness, but somehow they manage to make this mess of a movie into something memorable.

I saw the film at a special screening for MySpace users (which I am not proud of) and I have rarely heard an audience laugh so hard. Maybe we all wanted the movie to be so funny that we even laughed at the unfunny bits, but I stand by my belief that Superbad is one of the funniest films I have seen in years. Everyone has his moment in the film (and by everyone I mean all the male leads). Michael Cera reprises his role as George Michael (from Arrested Development) in all but name: he face paints with his Asian lab partner, he toasts to "respecting women", and he runs like the fat girl that got picked last in gym class.

Jonah Hill, coming off a fairly memorable role in Knocked Up, is about as loud and obnoxious as one would expect. What separates him from every other teen movie fat kid is that he does not exist solely to be taunted and ridiculed. He gets spat on and hit by a car or two, but he's kind of a badass in his own way.

Seth Rogen (Knocked Up, 40-Year Old Virgin), who also co-wrote the script, and Bill Hader (Knocked Up), mesh perfectly as a pair of cops intent on making their jobs fun. Although comparisons will inevitably be drawn between them and the highway cops from Broken Lizard's Super Troopers, Rogan and Hader hold their own. It is hard to make the whole "small town cops who like to screw around on the job" thing fresh, but they manage pull it off, in large part because of Christopher Mintz-Plasse, a.k.a. McLovin, with whom they share most of their scenes.

Now I did not think Mintz-Plasse was funny all the time, but when he was funny, he killed. The scenes with Rogan, Hader, and Mintz-Plasse are some of the funniest in the film. Mintz-Plasse, as the scrawny super-nerd Fogell, takes the character to heights Anthony Michael Hall only dreamed of. His sex scene with a young redhead captures a first time like few films before it, with ALL of the awkward moments. Fogell's pathetic attempts at suaveness will make you cringe, laugh, and empathize all at once. His fake arrest towards the end of the film is a little predictable (especially after DJ Qualls' miserable excuse for entertainment, The New Kid), but still enjoyable. How can you not love a kid whose voice cracks almost every time he speaks? I would pay to see a movie of him cheering at a football game...that would be hilarious.

What makes Superbad better than the average teen comedy is the incredible chemistry between Hill and Cera. The phrase sounds hackneyed at this point, but I can find no other way to describe the relationship between the two young stars. I really believed that they were best friends. They may have acted gayer than most heterosexual best friends I know, but I still bought their friendship. Without that, what barely passes for a plot would not have been sufficient to carry the movie. The fact that the film manages to work so well despite the paper-thin plot is a testament to the writers' and actors' abilities.

The "plot" of Superbad, if you can call it that, follows two co-dependant high school seniors as they attempt to supply alcohol for a party. If that does not sound like a paper-thin plot then you clearly have not seen Dazed and Confused...(awkward silence)... What I meant by the terrible joke I just made is that inane plots are about as standard in teen comedies as seatbelts in a minivan. Seth (Jonah Hill) and Evan (Michael Cera) get stuck in the roles of booze suppliers when their friend, Fogell, whom Seth hates, gets a fake ID and Seth's dream girl, Jules, invites Seth to her party. He stupidly agrees to bring all the booze...hilarity ensues.

The "plot" really gets rolling when Seth and Evan think the cops busted Fogell for having a fake ID. What really happened is that a thug robbed the liquor store and punched out Fogell. The cops, Slater (Hader) and Michaels (Rogen), befriend Fogell, whom they call McLovin, because that's what his ID says. Meanwhile some weird guy hits Seth with his car and then agrees to drive them to a party and score them some booze so Seth won't sue him. I am not going to continue with the plot description, because I already sound like an idiot. It is not my fault, the plot is idiotic, but that does not matter when the laughs come at you like they do in Superbad.

I should include one major warning to any potential audience members, Superbad is one of the most homoerotic movies of all time. If have any repulsion to male genitalia then you should not see this film! I am not accusing Seth Rogen of being gay, in fact, he is the dudest of dudes, but Superbad takes gay jokes to the furthest limits of good taste. The film has eight-year olds drawing phallus-shaped superheroes for heck's sake! Seth and Evan's sleepover in the film's finale parodies the end of almost every teen sex comedy. Instead of a girl and a guy finally hooking up after a two-hour wait, Seth and Evan sleep together (not sexually of course). They declare their love for each other (something they have not been able to do up until this point), they hug for a uncomfortably long time after which there is a dissolve to morning (film lingo for sex happened), and they have an awkward moment in the morning when Seth leaves without trying to wake Evan and then there is the awkward goodbye. If that does not remind you of American Pie or any other teen sex scene where our male or female hero finally gets the guy/girl, then you have not watched enough movies. This is perhaps Rogen and Goldberg's (the writers) cleverest scene, and also one of their most homoerotic.

Superbad is clearly for the Adult Swim generation (a block of cartoons on Cartoon Network, not a code word for skinny dipping); it is sophomoric and it does not make a whole lot of sense, but it delivers the laughs more often than both Aqua Teen Hunger Force and Family Guy. High-schoolers and Twentysomethings will love Superbad and everyone else probably won't, but hey, it is not written for them anyways. That's not to say that Superbad gets by solely on fart jokes and pot smoking. The humor is a lot less gross-out-centric than previous teen comedies such as American Pie and its many sequels. There is a fair amount of drug use, but this is no Dazed and Confused. Think of Superbad as 40 Year Old Virgin for teens and you will get exactly what you expected from the film, minus Steve Carrell, who is hilarious.


Recommended: Yes

Movie Mood: Funny Movie
Viewing Method: Sneak Preview at My Local Theater
Film Completeness: Looked complete to me.
Worst Part of this Film: Plot