Bona Fide Badass: My Review of Superbad

Forget everything your sappy old-timer nostalgia tells you about Fast Times at Ridgemont High, or Risky Business, or The Last American Virgin, or Porky's, or even R-rated updates like American Pie. Superbad is the new reigning deity of raunchy teenage comedy. It taps into 17-year-old male pathos like nothing before it. (And as a former 17-year-old male, I consider myself an expert on the subject.)

Exhibits A, B and C: Would a 17-year-old boy, wandering through a stranger's basement at midnight, hide a cache of precious beer inside giant laundry detergent containers in an effort to escape with said beer? Quite possibly. Would two 17-year-old boys in the midst of an illegal liquor-buy take a break from the tension of the moment to sprint 3 blocks for a better look at some huge breasts? Sure. Would a 17-year-old boy know the best waistband technique for concealing an erection during class? Absolutely.

As these three situations suggest, everything in this movie is somehow equal parts outrageous and genuine, obscene and sublime.

Like any comedy involving teens who must manufacture fun out of thin air, the setting is a non-descript city with modest accoutrements, including an oppressively large high school, two-story shopping mall, and small-town cops who aren't exactly worried about their career track.

The main characters are Even and Seth, played by Michael Cera and Jonah Hill, who are the fictional embodiment of the lives of Seth Rogan (Knocked Up, 40-year-old Virgin) and Evan Goldberg, who co-wrote the film. They play painfully un-cool seniors in high school, each three weeks away from graduation, and each about to head separate ways for college. Seth is the heavyset mouthpiece of the pair, and is everything Evan is not: outgoing, aggressive and willing to embark on just about anything that strikes Evan as a bad idea. They are a study in contrasts.