“Did you see what those dickmouths wrote?”Photo: Sony
Things You Should Know About ‘Superbad’ Before Seeing It
Superbad, the greatest movie of all time, opens tomorrow. David Edelstein loved it, and so did pretty much every other critic known to Rotten Tomatoes. But they’re critics: They had some bones to pick (appropriately enough, this being a comedy about teen boys). We’ve assembled a handy guide to complaints about the movie; read close, and you’ll see the shape of the inevitable backlash. — Nick Catucci
“This is a very offensive film that I would have trouble watching with my mother (if you know what I mean).” —Danny Minton, Crunch on This
“The whole movie is a love poem to a male teenager’s constant focus on his penis. Everything else is an annoying distraction.” —Victoria Alexander, Rotten Tomatoes
“At times, [director] Greg Mottola loses [his] perception of character and destiny in mere slapstick: Jonah Hill gets knocked over by a car not once but twice, and is smacked with a baseball bat as well.” —David Denby, The New Yorker
“Seth has suffered years of rejection and can now only express a sexually aggressive form of hatred toward women. There’s a word for that: misogyny.” —Josh Larsen, Naperville Sun
“It differs from Virgin and Knocked Up in throwing the infantilism back into the high school age group, but that’s not entirely a good thing, since much of the dialogue penned by Rogen and Goldberg, both in their mid-twenties, doesn’t sound entirely convincing in the supposedly eighteen-year old mouths of Seth and Evan.” —Dr. Frank Swietek, One Guy’s Opinion
“[The movie’s] notion of a wild party is so safe, it might as well be an instance of approved Amish oat-sowing.” —Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly
“The friendship of Seth and Evan has homoerotic undertones, and there’s a funny scene where they declare their undying love for each other. But because this is an American movie, don’t expect the frankness of Alfonso Cuarón’s Y Tu Mama Tambien, which took the close friendship of two horny teenage pals to its logical conclusion. In Superbad, the lovefest between the best friends is strictly platonic, which makes it nonthreatening to the crowds at the multiplex.” —Stephen Farber, Hollywood Reporter
Things You Should Know About ‘Superbad’ Before Seeing It
