Not Another Teen Sex Movie

Superbad has a lot more on its mind than the typical horndog high school movie, but more than anything, it’s about how awkward teenage boys relate to teenage girls who are only slightly more together. The boys in Superbad take a hit-and-run approach, working their marks like Catskills comics, hoping to leave ’em laughing. Even Evan’s best friend Seth (played by Jonah Hill) goes after the gal he’s interested in by trying to get her drunk, so she’ll be too busy guffawing to pay attention to his gawkiness. (Seth’s analytical that way. Checking out his clothes in the mirror, he grumbles to Evan that no one’s had a sexual act performed on them in cargo shorts “since ’Nam.”)

Superbad’s geeks look like real geeks: not hopelessly unfashionable, just a little clueless. And the pretty high school girls look like real pretty high school girls: not knockouts, just average teenagers who haven’t fully matured. Though the film is far from a “shame of the nation” cautionary tale, it’s telling that so many of these characters are stymied by what they think they know about sex from years of media saturation. Porn-addicted Seth is obsessed with perfecting his technique before college, while Evan wants to be the anti-Seth, the gentleman who wins over hearts and minds, not loins. In an ironic twist, the girl Evan likes tries to win him over by getting smashed and offering herself to him, in a painful scene that has her gyrating like a rap-video hoochie while an unnerved Evan keeps muttering, “Oh, you’re so pretty, you’re so pretty.”

Given how spot-on Superbad is about stupid teenage mating rituals, it’s a little disappointing that the plot is driven by something right out of a dopey ’80s teen comedy. The movie follows Evan and Seth’s attempt to provide liquor for a party, for which they need the help of their only friend with a fake ID, übernerdy Fogell (played by newcomer Christopher Mintz-Plasse). But Fogell blows it from the start, first by getting a Hawaiian driver’s license under the improbable name “McLovin,” then by becoming a witness in a liquor-store robbery, which sets him off on a night-long adventure with two incompetent cops. Meanwhile, Evan and Seth go their own way, hooking up with a creepy middle-aged dude who takes them to a much more dangerous party where they try to steal booze. Superbad was produced by comedy god Judd Apatow and written years ago by his Knocked Up collaborators Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg (note the first names), and at times it plays like the work of fledgling screenwriters trying to break into Hollywood with something formulaic. It’s either the smartest teen-sex comedy ever made, or a purposeful dumbing-down of the Apatow/Rogen/Goldberg aesthetic.

That said, the material with McLovin and the cops—one played by Rogen, the other by Saturday Night Live’s Bill Hader—is screamingly funny. And it helps that Superbad is helmed by Greg Mottola, a talented director who’s been working on top-tier sitcoms for the past decade after debuting with the winning indie comedy-drama The Daytrippers. Mottola doesn’t overplay the implausible material, and he’s smart enough to keep the low-key dialogue scenes in constant motion. The Evan and Seth conversation that opens the film takes place over about a dozen locations and 20 minutes of screen time, but the way Mottola orchestrates it, it feels like it’s been going on for years.

Mottola keeps Evan and Seth together in the frame more often than not, right up to the closing scene, when the director makes a poignant visual joke out of the fact that his heroes literally can’t see each other anymore. Superbad is about the part of growing up where kids learn to take the confidence they feel talking to their best friends and apply it to interactions with strangers. Evan and Seth know instinctively and intellectually what to do—but until they can get their nerves to cooperate, they’ll never be McLovin.