Like American Graffiti and Dazed And Confused, Superbad condenses all the cruelty, mixed emotions, angst, fun, and insanity of high-school life into a single night of kinetic mayhem. In the tradition of such end-of-class movies, Superbad chronicles Hill and Cera's epic misadventures in securing alcohol for a raucous party where they hope to finally score with their respective crushes. In a hilarious subplot, über-Poindexter/unwieldy third wheel Christopher Mintz-Plasse gets separated from Hill and Cera and spends the night tagging along with a pair of goofy, underachieving Super Troopers (Seth Rogen and Bill Hader) who immediately take to Mintz-Plasse because they never really stopped being goofy teenaged dorks themselves. The looming specter of college and its friendship-testing separation gives the film a bittersweet undertone that seldom gets in the way of big-ass laughs and infectious high spirits.
With Superbad, producer Apatow solidifies his position as the undisputed king of dick-joke movies with surprising emotional relevance. But the element of surprise is largely gone: After Virgin and Knocked Up, people have come to expect Apatow's productions to include a little pathos with the scatological tomfoolery. Superbad consequently sets itself apart through the quality and quantity of its manhood-themed humor. From a riotous flashback to Hill's monomaniacal early obsession with drawing male genitalia onward, this is the Citizen Kane of dick-joke movies. Superbad is a funny, boozy, ramshackle party, but it's more likely to leave audiences with a tingly afterglow than a pounding hangover.
