Spoiler Warning: This discussion has very few spoilers: some set up from the first act, a general idea of the narrative at hand.
















Rating: 4 out of 5.

"I'm sorry, Evan, that the Coen Brothers don't direct the porn that I watch."

Superbad - potentially the most quotable film of the 2000s - is a film I haven't seen since I was in high school, and how it has held up so well, I do not know. It is unfairly funny, still making me gasp for air at some of the absurd dialogue and creative screenwriting. It's a coming-of-age comedy that I hope people look back on with the fondness of the 90s rom-com era because it's one of the few noughties ones that remains achingly amusing.

I only have good things to say about Superbad. It is cast to absolute perfection - with Jonah Hill and Michael Cera looking a believable age and nailing the painfully awkward comedy. Hill, particularly, is handed some of the diciest lines of dialogue but always gets the delivery right; I could talk about lines as case studies, but the conclusion is that it makes you laugh every time. Christopher Mintz-Plasse is flat-out ridiculous as McLovin, delivering some of the film's most iconic moments. Bill Hader and Seth Rogen round out what I would describe as the main cast as two of the most maligned yet centrally entertaining police officers put to the silver screen.

Directorially, it's pretty average but places its focus in the right places, as all comedies should. Mottola understands that the draw of the film and what makes it work are the leading actors, pulling back and letting them run with the screenplay by Rogen and Evan Goldberg. It's not flashy, but it is sensible and well-handled. The wardrobe is so 2000s that it has almost come around and become fashionable again, creating this rather remarkable new layer of comedy I didn't expect.

Superbad is one of the first films I'd name in the canon of high-school movies. Its flashes of ageing 2000s culture can leave a little sourness, but its more wholesome themes of brotherly friendship and maturation are surprisingly at the forefront for a comedy as vulgar and silly as this.

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