Read More @HJ Reviews: The Kids are Alright Tim Berroth

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.

Two, to the movie’s discredit, if you’re a police officer, you may not appreciate this movie at all. The two cop characters, who end up getting lots of screen time, are simply not sympathetic characters, even after the story tries to save them at the end. They’re bumbling, irresponsible, un-cool . . . and even when we’re told that they were doing what they do to teach the teenage characters that “hey, cops can be cool too,” it still doesn’t work. They’re not cool. They’re losers. And this really doesn’t jive with the rest of the movie at all. I was left wondering why they were there at all, and even more so when their stated purpose turned out to be such a failure.

So, back to the main question: does the raunch of this story outweigh the parable? For me, it does. Like above, the requisite message just doesn’t save it. I simply refuse to believe that intelligent people need to sit through two hours of penis drawings and f-bombs, just to be reminded of things that intelligent people know already—especially when the penises and f-bombs are so profuse, so unnecessary to character-development, realism, or anything else, and when the reminder feels so tacked-on, redundant, and uninsightful.

That being said, for the intended teenage audience of this movie, perhaps some value could be found in Superbad as a sort-of “raunch parable lite”—though said teenagers will have to show quite a bit of maturity and ignore quite a bit of drivelly filth to get anything out of it. It still does, after all, have the defining characteristics of the genre, just not with the kind of quality that something like Knocked Up has. It does still turn its characters on their heads, take the high road by the end, and all that, it’s just that its characters’ heads are more unlikable by then, and the turning isn’t as impressive, and the road not as interesting or well-sketched.

So, finally, I guess my insight—for what it’s ever worth—on this film is: as always, human beings must tell redemptive stories. We just can’t help taking the opportunity to make morality plays out of even the most obnoxious, irresponsible, and immature among us. Still, when our forbears did that kind of thing, they did it with Odysseus. With Hamlet. With Jay Gatsby. And even when, nowadays, we feel the need to dress these plays up in R-ratedness—even when you feel the need for penises and f-bombs, and sometimes one does, “just for fun”—there are much better choices than Superbad.

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