Film

As Harold & Kumar is to pot, Superbad is to alcohol: This variation on American Pie looks back fondly on an age when the pressure to consume booze is so strong, it pervades virtually every aspect of social life. Strenuously sober, Pie ended with a castwide orgy; by the end of Superbad’s Last Party of High School, many characters are too drunk to stand.

Like Greg Mottola’s The Daytrippers (1996), Superbad unfolds as a long day’s journey into night. Lifelong friends Evan (Cera) and Seth (Hill) set out to consummate their senior-year crushes—Seth with out-of-his-league Jules (Stone), Evan with math classmate Becca (MacIsaac). The linchpin in their plan is Fogell, a.k.a. “McLovin” (Mintz-Plasse), possessor of a Hawaiian fake ID, if not the will to use it. His botched liquor-store purchase for the team is an early comic highlight, compelling him into spending the evening with two hilariously volatile cops (Rogen and Hader) whose own taste for shit-faced antics hasn’t dwindled over the years.

The officers are distant cousins to Rogen’s man-child in Knocked Up, this summer’s previous triumph from producer Judd Apatow. Narrower in appeal, Superbad has a similarly loose structure and the same terrific interplay among the leads. Opening with the Columbia Pictures logo circa 1979, this is the rare high-concept movie that feels almost autobiographical—in some ways universally so. It suggests that some coming-of-age comedies can never be outgrown.