Boys just want to have fun

Teenagers in need of a hand: Seth (Jonah Hill) and Evan (Michael Cera)
10 April 2012

Produced rather than directed by Judd Apatow, whose better Knocked Up is now going the rounds, this teen comedy written by Apatow's longtime collaborators (Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg) is in much the same audaciously scatological vein.

The director here is Greg Mottola, who spares us nothing of the usual randy teenage sexual fantasies, adds a few more and hopes like hell to amuse those who don't mind the language.

Michael Cera stars as Evan, a shy, sexually terrified but otherwise fairly normal boy, and Jonah Hill is Seth, his porky, foul-mouthed and sexually obsessed best friend. They are soon to leave high school and have got into different colleges where they will have to part company. It's a horrible prospect since few others will talk to them, and what they want to do most of all is to get into a final party where the girls await them - largely because they have promised to bring along as much booze as they can carry.

But they are not old enough to buy the alcohol and have to rely on the nerdish Fogel (Chris Mintz-Plasse) who isn't really up to the job. Bill Hader and Seth Rogen play the two hopelessly inefficient police officers who get mixed up in the process when the liquor store is robbed while Fogel is attempting to make the purchase.

This is a boys' movie, so the girls (Martha MacIsaac, Emma Stone and Aviva Farber) take second place in the scheme of things.

If you can stand the predatory assumptions, which are that girls are mere sex objects to most teenage boys, there's much more to this movie than the usual teen comedy. You can't help laughing even as you wince.

Superbad
Cert: 15

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