Seth: You know when you
hear girls say 'Ah man, I was so shit-faced last night, I shouldn't have fucked
that guy?' We could be that mistake!
 |
| Director: Greg Mottola (2007) |
In all honesty, I'm not a huge fan of comedies. That’s not
to say I harbor a dislike of the genre, but I feel humour doesn’t fit the 90
minute run time that most comedies possess. What's worse is when a comedy
surpasses this length; the film becomes worse because of it. It happened to the
40 year old virgin, and it’s happened again, this time to Greg Mottolas Superbad.
The plot of Superbad is simple. 2 co dependent high schooler's
Evan (Michael Cera) and Seth (Jonah Hill) are invited to a house party, and
agree to supply the alcohol in order to impress their crushes, Jules (Emma Stone)
and Becca (Martha McIsaac). The film starts as a solid pace, the jokes flow and
events progress well. After a liquor store mix up, Evan and Seth get separated
from alcohol buying friend Fogel (played by Christopher Mintz-Plasse and going
by the name of his fake ID, McLovin), and go searching for their own source of
the golden liquid.
It doesn’t help that the story here is weak. While this
isn't necessarily a crime in a comedy such as this, it does fail to act as a
good vessel for the laughs. Plot is severely bogged down in the middle, with a
continuing stream of events that appear to have been invented just to prolong
the credits. At 114 minutes, Superbad
becomes an increasingly dull experience; it fails to hold the viewers attention
for this duration of time. The shining light in this dismal patch are 2 role
abusing policemen (Bill Hader and Seth Rogen).
Using the perks of their job to get free beer and run red traffic
lights, these 2 are at the center of the films funniest moments. Without these
this side splitting duo, Superbad would have crumbled to incredibly unfunny pieces
less than an hour into its running time. Once the final 3rd arrives,
the film picks up again, but the party they have spent all night trying to get
booze for is minor and underplayed, consuming far too little of the screen
time.
To conclude, Superbad tries to craft something touching and
emotional, but far too little time has been spent on character development prior
to this. This is cemented by hill playing an unlikable character and Michael Cera
playing exactly the same guy he plays in every film he's ever done. Still,
despite its name, Superbad isn't a terrible film by any means, it just suffers
heavily from its long-winded running time, and with some judicious editing,
could have been so much more.
5
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