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‘Superbad’

It helps that Judd Apatow’s doofus heroes always love and admire the women they lust after.

By Elise Nakhnikian
   ”We’ve told a lot of stories of underdog, immature guys trying to figure out how to grow up,” Judd Apatow told CNN while flacking his latest production, Superbad. Duh, dude. But this time around, the characters make the protagonists of Apatow’s earlier movies look practically statesmanlike.
   The producer/director/writer behind cult TV hits Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared (he also worked on The Larry Sanders Show and The Ben Stiller Show), Apatow earned enough goodwill in Hollywood by directing 2005’s The 40 Year-Old Virgin and this year’s equally popular Knocked Up to get the go-ahead on a script he fell in love with years ago.
   The first draft of Superbad was written by Seth Rogen, a member of Apatow’s roving ensemble (he starred in both Freaks and Undeclared as well as Knocked Up ), and Rogen’s best friend, Evan Goldberg, while the two were in high school. It shows. Apatow just produced this time around, as he did on Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy and Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, but he ran the movie like one of his TV shows, wielding the bulk of the power from the producer’s seat as he helped the writers inject his trademark realistic emotions into their nerdy boy’s wish-fulfillment fantasy.
   Seth (Jonah Hill) and his BFF Evan (Michael Cera) are high school seniors. A perennial outcast, Seth’s a fat, frizzy-haired loudmouth, while Evan might be one of the popular kids if he were just a little more self-confident and a little less sensitive. Inseparable since grade school, the two will soon head off to different colleges — but first, they’re about to have a surreal, unforgettable night on the town. During the movie’s one transformational evening, Evan and Seth will run from the law, survive near-death experiences, and find what might be love with the girls of their dreams. It’s kind of like American Graffiti — if Toad, the sweet nerd played by Charles Martin Smith, had been the main character and had had an equally nerdy best friend.
   Not that Toad had anything like this kind of mouth on him. Seth talks about sex the way Joe Torre talks about baseball: ceaselessly, fluently, obsessively. All that leering and braggadocio should be obnoxious, but, like Evan, we put up with it because we know Seth is basically a good guy. We also see that he hates to admit how vulnerable he is, so he uses sex talk as a smokescreen. Besides, we know his dirty little secret: Like Evan, he’s just a frustrated virgin, obsessed with girls in general — and one girl in particular.
   Evan’s crush is a bright-eyed girl named Becca (Martha MacIsaac). She obviously likes him too, but he’s so awkward around her that he can’t see it. He manages to talk to her for a few moments in the hall after class, but when he realizes they’re headed in the same direction after saying goodbye, he zips ahead like the rabbit at a dog track to avoid having to make any more conversation. That’s one of those wonderfully funny moments of truth that always dot Apatow’s work, grounding it in reality even as the plot caroms around like a ball of silly putty.
   The scene where Evan and Becca finally hook up is another of those many moments. This sweet, all-American girl tries to act like a porn star, although she may be a virgin too — and what, after all, could be more American than that?
   Seth lusts after Jules, another lovely girl next door. Convinced she’s way out of his league, he tries to get in good with her by scoring the booze for her party. His scramble to get the alcohol while the party is still underway becomes the McGuffin driving the plot.
   To get the booze, Seth needs the help of his and Evan’s sort-of-friend Fogell. Fogell may be an ur-nerd, so uncool he makes those two look suave in comparison, but he has a brand-new fake ID.
   Played with a winning mixture of misplaced confidence and insecurity by Christopher Mintz-Plasse, a self-described “regular high school student” who has never made a film before, Fogell has his own adventures over the course of the evening. Witnessing a robbery, befriending a pair of cops (co-writer Rogen and a very funny Bill Hader) who are more interested in reliving their own adolescences than in doing their jobs, and finding the nerve to dance with a girl he was practically stalking in school earlier that day, Fogell’s well on his way to becoming McLovin, the rat-packer type he invented for his fake ID. Trying to look grown-up and sophisticated in a corduroy vest and pants that are at least two sizes too big, Mintz-Plasse’s Fogell/McLovin may be this year’s Pedro, a dweeb for all seasons. The “I am McLovin” T-shirt and hoodie were already on sale the weekend the movie opened, and googling McLovin called up nearly 400,000 pages.
   For anyone who went to an American high school, Superbad’s respect for the intensity and integrity of high school friendships strikes a chord, but it probably speaks loudest to nerdy boys and the successful family men they tend to grow into.
   For those of us who were never boys at all, there’s less to relate to in Superbad than there was in 40 Year-Old Virgin or Knocked Up, but it helps that Apatow’s doofus heroes always love and admire the women they lust after. Superbad has got a generous heart, a humanistic outlook, and a genuine respect for women. And that puts it in a whole different league than casually misogynistic adolescent fantasies like Porky’s or Revenge of the Nerds.
Rated R for pervasive crude and sexual content, strong language, drinking, some drug use and a fantasy/comic violent image — all involving teens.