Superbad: A Review

Seeing Superbad reminded me of many conversations with Steve Mackler. Steve was a foul-mouthed guy who was a year-older than me in school. I was on the debate squad, he did humorous interpretation, and so we had many weekends around each other at speech competitions. Steve had a knack for making the conservatives blush with his raw and frank sense of humor. He was also easily one of the funniest people I have ever known, with the ability to bring me to tears with his quips.

Jonah Hill is Superbad’s Steve, a foul-mouthed and horny high-school senior named Seth. Already dealing with the sad reality that he and his best friend, played by Michael Cara (to the delight of Arrested Development fans everywhere) will be graduating and heading to separate colleges in the fall, he is fairly myopic in his concerns. He doesn’t want to graduate from high school a virgin. He wants sex, and he wants it tonight.

What follows is a buddy comedy standing in a fairly deep tradition of similar comedies over the last 30 years or so. This one, coming from the same folks that brought us Knocked Up earlier this summer, is a good one, and in good I mean that it is extremely funny if you can handle that kind of humor. Seth Rogan and Judd Apatow have given us The 40-Year Old Virgin, Knocked Up, and Superbad, and in all cases my wife has reminded me that she’s not sure she wants to admit to anyone that she’s actually seen them. That’s OK, I caught her laughing.

To accomplish his mission, Seth commits at school to providing alcohol to a party that night. The party is hosted by the girl that he’s after, and Cara’s Evan finds out that his interest is heading there, and so their adventure must take them into the liquor store. They find a friend, Fogell, with a newly minted fake ID, and so they set out on their trail. The trailers give some of the zaniness away, but to spare you, I’ll suffice it to say that Fogell, or should I say “McLovin” winds up riding around with the strangest pair of cops since Reno 911, Seth winds up way over his head in a death match at another party, and Evan bumbles his way through much before they get back together. Their quest is not easy.

Admittedly, the nature of the comedy makes this a difficult movie to recommend blindly. I have friends that I know would enjoy it, and I have friends that I know wouldn’t. Either way, there are several things about the film that interest me. First, I wondered as I reflected on the movie whether it should be required viewing for parents of teenagers. I expect many of them would be shocked and horrified at the way in which sexual topics are explored, but my sense is that it is much closer to the reality of what teenagers are being exposed to than what parents assume their kids know. The film takes for granted the widespread access to sexual information that is a basic reality for many teenagers in our wired world.

Second, like Virgin and Knocked Up, the film takes a surprisingly conservative turn by the end. This genre, probably set in motion most by Animal House, has a knack for being a sustained celebration of sexual liberation in all its forms. This film isn’t. The path to freedom for these guys, mainly getting their objects of lust drunk so that they can conquer them, is a hollow dream, and by the end they seem to recognize that. Despite having a shocking amount of knowledge about sex acts and the female anatomy, they have very little wisdom about relationships, love, and the rich meaning of sexuality. This divide between wisdom and knowledge seems very prescient in our culture.

In the end, the movie is more a celebration of male friendship. Their friendship is what they understand most deeply and is what means the most. They still have sex on the brain, but in their more sane moments, they seem to recognize that their pursuit of alcohol and sex are mere distractors or coping mechanisms. The characters are pretty bankrupt in their pursuits, but they aren’t without hope. I think the success of the film and of these filmmakers in this brand of comedy is that they are drawing up imminently relatable people. We too often find ourselves bankrupt in our pursuits, but hope that there is something deeper, something more substantive that might pull us through.

Of course, it may be that Apatow and Rogan are just throwing in the heart in these films to justify a whole string of racy jokes and seedy adventures. I don’t think so, but even if it is, then they have just backed their way into something more substantive than they might expect. The deeper strain of these characters, from this and their other films, are strains that I can live with. There are certainly worse places from which to start a conversation.