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Superbad (2007)

Director: Greg Mottola

Time Out rating

Average user rating

58 reviews

Synopsis

A coming-of-age tale about two socially inept teenage boys about to graduate high school. Theirs is a ridiculously dependent friendship – but now, they've gotten into different colleges and are forced to contemplate life apart. Evan is sweet, smart, and generally terrified. Seth is foul-mouthed, volatile, and all-consumed with the opposite sex. This is the story of their misguided attempts to approach the objects of their affections in one panic-driven night.

Movie review

From Time Out London

After sex (‘The 40 Year Old Virgin’) and pregnancy (‘Knocked Up’), the new crowned kings of comedy – the broad, improvisatory ensemble of comics and filmmakers headed by Judd Apatow – turn to adolescence. ‘Superbad’ stars Michael Cera and Jonah Hill (the tubby one from ‘Knocked Up’) as two high school seniors preoccupied with alcohol, virginity, parties and the transition to college. Hardly an unprecedented set-up – ‘Dazed and Confused’ and ‘American Pie’ come most quickly to mind – but, like its stablemates, the picture is delivered with unusually high levels of both belly laughs and emotional affect. Gross-out is exploited – and how – but shaded with, and put to the service of, self-awareness, fellow-feeling and regret.

The film is produced by Apatow, co-written by ‘Knocked Up’ lead Seth Rogen and directed by Greg Mottola, whose TV work has included ‘Undeclared’ with Apatow and ‘Arrested Development’ with Cera. Working their pre-existing personae, Hill and Cera make a charmingly geeky odd couple, though third stooge Christopher Mintz-Plasse threatens to steal the movie as the über-nerd who falls in with a pair of puerile cops (including Rogen in a handlebar moustache) by dint of a preposterous fake ID identifying him simply as ‘McLovin’.

If these scenes set themselves a lower bar than the unassumingly deft character work of the main story, with its lively attention to adolescent anxieties, ‘Superbad’ at its best goes right through knockabout to land in deliciously obscene places – notably a staggering succession of doodles in which tumescent cocks take on various extraordinary guises. Crafted with such deliriously pain-staking care as to defy offence, they stand for a film, a group of films, defining the difference between vulgarity and crassness.

Author: Ben Walters 2007-09-10 17:15:56

Time Out London Issue 1934: September 12-18 2007

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User reviews of this film

jose said...

Posted on Oct 07 2007 17:49 the funny parts were mostly in the trailer.
for pure entertainment and passing the time away, it's worth watching.
although i really found the main character (white afro dude) really annoying

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nicola said...

Posted on Oct 06 2007 14:17 im goin watchin it 2day cnt wait :)

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jhonny said...

Posted on Oct 06 2007 12:06 an exelent film a must see

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jake said...

Posted on Oct 05 2007 21:37 Amazing film 10/10

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sully said...

Posted on Oct 05 2007 16:21 im seein super bad tonight;):)

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jack said...

Posted on Oct 04 2007 17:03 lets go watch on sunday boys!!!!

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Ben said...

Posted on Oct 04 2007 16:30 Not that good. A few really really funny bits but the rest was lame.Just seemed to drag and drag and drag

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Kate said...

Posted on Oct 04 2007 12:57 LOVE this film - actually hallariously funny and superbly well acted - unlike most the shite you see teen- comedies now. Seth Rogen is god.
LOVe it!

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Kayleigh said...

Posted on Oct 03 2007 19:11 Ahh sounds an alright film..saturday night it is!

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tom said...

Posted on Oct 02 2007 17:50 Brilliant 10 out of 10!!! It is the best movie you will see, although i aint seen it hahahahahahaha, LOL

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Muppet said...

Posted on Oct 01 2007 21:35 Absolutely awesome film the best around at the moment!
WKD!

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idlewise pirate said...

Posted on Sep 30 2007 11:42 absolutly f*****g hilarious

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Lauren said...

Posted on Sep 29 2007 14:27 Great film. Maybe not for you boring people... but good for the rest of us!

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twinkle said...

Posted on Sep 27 2007 22:16 superbad lived up to its name, it was indeed super bad. Through out the whole film i was under the impresion that this overlong vanity piece which could have cut at least 45min by getting rid of the 'fun cops', might get better, i was wrong, i only stayed because the vue cinema do not give refunds for rubbish films, and walking out would have wasted £8 the leads were in turn unlikable, unbearably wimpy, disloyal, unrealalistic, far to young for there age and quite frankly if, as i have been lead to belave based on the producers youth, i find no supprise that no one liked them and they could not get laid. The only light in the cast being mclovin, a stupid likeable nice boy who is just out for fun with out being bogged down in the stupid mundanity his co-leads sweat from every pour. It had none of the likablity of all the other teen films in the last ten years, seems to hate all women, constantly refering to them in disgusting lanaguge, with a horrid nasty joke about a ladies time of the month.
Though i do concur that the on running joke of the fat one drawing willys all the time at the age of eight was very, very funny. This why superbad gets one star

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Hayley White said...

Posted on Sep 27 2007 10:27 Absolutely hilarious film... yes very crude, but well written, and actually how a lot of teenagers talk to each other so i wouldn't say it was over the top. consistently funny all the way through which is quite rare. only criticism would be that it was perhaps slightly too long (flagged a bit in the latter half, but picks up again towards the end) but otherwise absolutely fantastic and well worth seeing!

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