flowrs4ophelia | Film Review: "Superbad"

I'm sure you can think of many examples of movies about a character who, for one reason or another, thinks of himself or herself as completely hopeless in the dating area but is eventually able to change their point of view of themself and get the girl/guy. They may be socially inept, heavy or just not particularly gorgeous, or of course, a nerd. Often the story is about a girl who's supposed to be completely unnoticeable but, because it's Hollywood, is played by such a beautiful actress we can see she's a knockout even before she gets her makeover and loses the glasses in the second half of the film. Almost always the character has to change and gain confidence before they can impress the love interest. It seems to me like these kind of movies are meant to give the nerds, outcasts, and ugly ducklings some assurance that there is hope for them to find love after all, yet the reason why rarely extends much beyond "If you just be yourself, someone will love you for who you are."

But Superbad is something a little different, because this film actually illustrates how the dorks, nerds, and dweebs may be essentially different from the popular high school kids in ways that give them legitimate reasons not to just give up. It actually points out why in the world a girl could choose the math geek who eats lunch alone every day over the attention-spoiled football jock, even if it's not an explicit motivation affecting how the events play out. Rather than just showing why nobody should have to be the person they aren't, it shows why nobody should even want to be the kind of person that's so often the most liked.

Seth (Jonah Hill) and Evan (Michael Sera) are best friends reaching the end of their senior year of high school. Both of them are feeling pressure because of how few of their high school days are left for them to fully experience high school as well as a little panic because of their uncertainty about what's coming after it. They are, for the most part, only accepted by each other, and seem to feel like if they completely fail in high school as far as having friends and getting girls, they are doomed to be even more serious failures in college. And to make it all the more worrisome for them, they couldn't get accepted to the same college.

Seth has made his most important conquest to fulfill before the end of the year to simply get laid. He's particularly fixated on Jules, who is very pretty and popular and, miraculously to him, seems to like to talk to him. If he respects Jules and wants anything more from her than just sex, he doesn't dare show it (or perhaps dream of actually being able to get it), and talks about her and all women in an almost over-compensatingly misogynistic way. Evan, meanwhile, has a much more innocent interest in a girl named Becca, but is chronically incapable of talking to her without saying or doing something embarrassing. One day when Evan and Seth somewhat accidentally end up with both girls depending on them to supply alcohol at a party, it suddenly seems like everything they want most is attainable if they can just succeed in doing this one thing.

It's a comedy, so naturally, this is not so easily done, and the simple mission of using their sort-of-friend Fogell's fake I.D. to get the drinks and bring them to the party turns into a complicated conflict that's drawn out for a good hour. The first few scenes of the movie are full of extremely vulgar dialogue that's more like the way teenagers really talk than the unrealistically clever and witty kind of lines that are typical of comedies, and it's not until all these different difficulties begin to arise that it actually starts to get very funny. And the harder it gets for them to just get to the party with the damn booze, the more pathetic does Seth's desperation to do this seem and the more endearing does Evan's. Seth hopes Jules will end up drunk enough to fool around with someone like him, while Evan would be happy just to do something to make Becca happy and keeps trying to tell Seth his plan is maybe not so moral.

For at the heart of this movie (yes, it does have a heart, unlike you might expect from the majority of R-rated comedy movies these days) is a message about not just doing whatever is necessary to be liked, but actually deserving it. It is funny how much of the movie is about doing things that are immoral or illegal in order to be more liked. There is one scene in which a character who is usually completely ignored by his classmates is seen getting arrested and dragged away in a police car and all the sudden becomes very popular. I don't know about you, but this doesn't give me much motivation to want to date or be friends with somebody popular.

I've been watching Michael Sera in the painfully hilarious show Arrested Development for a long time and always thought he was kind of adorable, but it's only as Evan in this film that I've found him remarkably irresistible despite making a perfectly believable dork. His character has the complete opposite of bad-boy appeal; he is, in many ways, an outcast and rebel for doing what's right rather than for being bad. This certainly illuminates some pretty funny irony in the movie's title. Perhaps some of my own experiences are what makes me able to relate to and be drawn to people like him. I was never subjected to very cruel and judgmental treatment by other kids in school, but I've been with "cool" people before and you know, they're really no fun at all. There's so much you can miss out on in life when you worry about always maintaining a certain image.

Of course, it is important to be yourself, and believe that the real you under the nerdy glasses can be attractive and loveable to somebody. Many of us have heard that tons of times without it being terribly helpful. But furthermore, as this film suggests, it's important to not compromise yourself. If an unpopular dork can refuse to do this even when it may mean never being loved or accepted, is there anything more attractive than that?