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Superbad (2007 - Greg Mottola)
Saw this one Tuesday night but never got around to doing a write-up. It's a funny, raunchy little movie, but while I laughed throughout I was definitely disappointed. Being co-written by Seth Rogan and produced by Judd Apatow, I had higher expectations. Sadly for me it's more like Porky's crossed with Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle than The 40-Year-Old Virgin or "Freaks & Geeks". For what it is, plenty of laughs, but I wanted a more reality and character-driven story than hijinx.
Jonah Hill and "Arrested Development"'s Michael Sera are both solid in the lead roles as two anti-social geeks trying to make their way to one drunken party before they graduate from High School, but there simply isn't the kind of depth and subtlty to their characters that the teenagers on the truly brilliant but cancelled "Freaks & Geeks" or "Undeclared" had. And since they are given pretty basic stuff to play, it's the supporting roles and the B story that are the true highlight of the movie. Christopher Mintz-Plasse plays their even geekier friend Fogell, aka McLovin' according to his newly acquired fake I.D. He is tasked with getting the alcohol that will be their golden ticket that will allow them to mix with the cool kids, but he gets separated from the other two and spends the entire night with two insane, irresponsible and hysterical police officers, played by Bill Hader and Seth Rogan himself. While thier storyline is way over-the-top, since the rest of the movie isn't grounded in very much interesting and revealing reality anyway it's a welcome sidetrack. Mintz-Plasse's McLovin' is the best thing in the movie, by far, and while that's fun and often very funny stuff it also highlights how far afield it is from the movie I wanted with the Apatow brand-name attached. The subject of teenagers attending drunken parties for the first time and hoping to start sexual experimentation could have been tackled with more insight and originality, and still just as many laughs.
Oh, well.
Definitely fun, surely worth seeing, but all I wanted to do when I got home is spin the DVD of "Freaks & Geeks" with the episode where Lindsay throws the party at her house when her parents leave town for the weekend.
GRADE: B-
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"Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream it takes over as the number one hormone. It bosses the enzymes, directs the pineal gland, plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote to Film is more Film." - Frank Capra
"Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream it takes over as the number one hormone. It bosses the enzymes, directs the pineal gland, plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote to Film is more Film." - Frank Capra
many years ago 
