Some people have read previous reviews of mine. If you’re one of those two people, first off: thanks! Second, you may be familiar with my coinage of the term “raunch parable” in reference to a recent trend in cinema. I’m referring to the trend of “R-rated comedies with ‘hearts of gold’”—comedies like Wedding Crashers, The 40 Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up, and now Superbad. These are films that, in my estimation, use realistic raunch to smuggle in very un-raunchy messages of unselfishness, maturity, love, et. al.

Since you pay attention to titles, however, when it comes to the final hit of the Summer ’07 Movie Season—Rogen and Goldberg’s Superbad—you’re already anticipating that I’ve got a slight caveat in view. And your anticipation is correct: though I enjoyed this last-in-the-line-of-raunch-parables, though it had some keel-over-in-your-seat-with-laughter moments, I wasn’t quite as taken with it as with its predecessors. And while I’m not completely sure why, I think it has to do with that titular question . . . when does the raunch of these movies outweigh any positive thematic contributions they may have to make? When does the R-ratedness “cross the line” from necessary realism to something else entirely?

First though, if you’re unfamiliar with the premise of Superbad, just think of any other teenage sex comedy and you’ll have the idea. This movie is ‘07’s version of American Pie. It bears striking resemblances to Weird Science (which is still so funny), Revenge of the Nerds, Porky’s, etc. You’ve got about-to-graduate dorks, you’ve got a “last stand” of sorts, you’ve got that one final quest to “get laid” before summer, before college, before “real life” begins.

To Superbad’s credit, by the end it does do the predictable thing and teaches a lesson to its protagonists—and its audience—about how sex isn’t everything, about how using people is wrong, about how everyone isn’t “doing it” like teenagers imagine, about the dangers of alcohol (implicitly). But this just didn’t seem as revelatory to me as it did with the other members of this “raunch parable” club I speak of. It felt just . . . expected. Formulaic. Ungenuine. I don’t know . . . it just felt . . . pointless, I guess. The parable, in other words, just didn’t even matter, given the raunch.

I’ll wrap that up in a second—first, two side notes. One, again to the movie’s credit, it does do a nice job dealing with the main relationship in the movie, which in fact is the friendship of the two male leads. The truth is, as much as “dudes” talk about girls, “getting with” girls, wanting to get with girls, and so on, especially in high school, our closest relationships are often with each other. And this creates some dissonance: is it okay that I . . . love my best friend? Is it okay that, secretly, he is the one I really want to be with the most, who I care about the most, who understands me best? Superbad gets this dissonance and, honestly, makes its riffing on that the main positive thematic contribution by film’s end. Kudos.

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