"Superbad": Kind of underwhelming, just like my life

Yesterday was a long day. I woke up early to take my car in for service and learned that, for reasons I won’t bore you with, I have to take it back on Monday. I spent the better part of my morning and early afternoon waiting for the paltry stipend I earned from my 50-hour-per-week internship ($10 a day, or $350 for the whole summer) and getting jerked around about when I could pick it up. Then my friend and I decided to see Superbad, which looked hilarious and sounded – from the unequivocal praise of critics and friends who saw early screenings – even funnier. So we rushed home from dinner, got on the computer and found exactly one showing before midnight that wasn’t sold out. We had half an hour to get to Hollywood, and I like to think that we might have made it before the previews were over if we hadn’t hit a Sobriety Checkpoint, which I had never even heard of before but is apparently when the police slow traffic down to a crawl on one of the city’s busiest streets to randomly pull people out of their cars and make them jump on one foot or something (fortunately, they just waved us through, but the old Asian man in front of us got the whole business). By the time we got through the fender-bender traffic on Hollywood Boulevard (after missing a turn), the movie had been running for about forty minutes. Oh yeah, and I’m pretty sure that sometime during all of this (although I didn’t really bother to ask), my ex-girlfriend was picking her new boyfriend up from the airport because he’s visiting her for the weekend, which is fantastic (I mean, I’m happy for her, but still…)

All of which is to say that, by the time that we walked in to the 12:30 AM showing of Superbad (the girl at the box office was nice enough to transfer the tickets that we bought online), I was: A) exhausted, B) in a terrible, angry mood and C) in desperate need of the funniest movie ever. But that’s the thing about expectations, as the hapless heroes of Superbad learn over the course of the movie – they are made to be broken. That’s not to say that Superbad isn’t good – it is, and I definitely recommend to anyone who doesn’t have a delicate sensibility (the jokes tend to be a little on the crude side). But here’s the dirty secret: It’s not as uproariously funny as everyone would have you believe. Certainly, there are plenty of laugh-out-loud moments, most of them having to do with the male organ (although one of the movie’s funniest, and most cringe-inducing, sequences has to do with the equipment of the fairer sex), but more than anything, Superbad is cute. Oh yeah, and about 30 minutes too long.

In the film, Evan (Michael Cera) and Seth (Jonah Hill) are two high school outcasts on the verge of graduation and separation, having gotten into different colleges. In a last-ditch effort to salvage their high school careers, they – along with sublimely nerdy third-wheel Fogell (Christopher Mintz-Plasse), whose fake ID lists his name as simply “McLovin” – go through ridiculous obstacles, including a liquor store robbery, two wildly incompetent cops, and the perils of public transportation, to obtain alcohol for a party in hopes that it will make the girls they like have sex with them. When they finally succeed, though, they find out that the greatest night of their lives isn’t exactly what they’d bargained for, and that true friendship isn’t something that should be taken for granted. Like I said: cute.

Ultimately, Superbad is much closer to Freaks and Geeks than, say, Anchorman, on the Judd Apatow scale of comedy. It probably isn’t quite as giggle-inducing, nor as eminently quotable as the latter (although there are a few lines that will no doubt live on in frat houses across the country for years to come), but it is much smarter and more genuine. As funny as it often is, Superbad takes its characters seriously, and deals with their insecurities and confusion with sympathy, if not always grace. If you’re expecting to be blown away, you might be in for a disappointment. But if you’re looking for a sincere comedy with some big laughs and an even bigger heart, Superbad is the place to be. Just watch out for Sobriety Checkpoints…