Superbad

Superbad (2007) is about three nerdy high school seniors on a night two weeks before graduation. Two of them have been friends for life but are beginning to drift apart—one has been accepted to Dartmouth while the other was rejected. These boys throughout high school have always been on the outskirts of things. One of them, Evan, the most normal of the three, is asked by his friend Becca why she never sees him at parties. He answers with an elaborate lie about how he is busy with other engagements when in fact the real answer is that he has never been invited to parties. His friend Seth, a heavy-set boy who is full of talk and plans for getting laid but is never able to carry through, offers to get liquor for a girl who is having a party—she invites him. He is certain that if he brings the liquor she'll reward him with sex. Their friend Fogell, the nerdiest and wildest of the group (his fake ID says his name is "McLovin"), pals up with two bumbling and wayward cops. The cops enjoy playing pranks on and in general terrorizing teenagers. They have a dark side—when the windshield of their cruiser is shattered, they decide to lay blame on Seth and Evan, and they enjoy a bit too much the tricks they play. Mostly, however, they're simply dimwit incompetents mourning the fact that they can no longer have the kind of fun the boys are having. Together and individually, the boys have a series of improbable adventures that involve booze, drugs, wild parties, attempts at sex, mayhem, physical danger, and whatever else you can imagine.

This is one of those films that, after two hours of total abandonment, brings its main characters to a point of enlightened understanding, moral uplift, and friendship. This seems to me a patently tacked on resolution to a film that is mainly a series of low-level skits about teen-agers running amok. I didn't particularly enjoy the film, and much of the humor was weak and lame.

Seth Rogen appears in the film as one of the two cops. He is said to have written the screenplay while still in high school. His co-screenwriter is Evan Goldberg. Obviously, the characters Seth and Evan in the film are self-portraits, or approximations thereof.

My high school experience was, unfortunately, not like the one shown in Superbad.