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August 22, 2007

Superbad

All Hail to the Penis

By Tram

As a passive observer of male sexuality, I never fail to be amazed of how atavistic men can be. Sure, us, girls, occasionally fluster ourselves silly when a nice-looking chap comes our way. But I'm not sure we gawk and salivate like Pavlov's dog, a phenomenon I've witnessed from guys on a regular basis. I suppose it's a good thing that I checked out Superbad (Greg Mottola, 2007) last night, because amidst the flourish of slo-mo close-ups of female breasts and buttocks, life started to make sense.

The ten bucks I shelled out at the box office granted me an unprecedeneted, birds-eye view to the male penis psyche. I remained transfixed from start-to-finish; call it a rat lab experiment, a head trip exercise, or just plain, droll amusement, but repressed horniness has never been this much of a hoot. Forget about the aesthetic possibilities of the film medium for a moment: in Superbad, the uncensored utterances spilt from Seth and Evan's filthy mouths are the show here. The candid glimpses of Seth and Evan awkwardly conversing with the girls in the hallways and classrooms are brilliantly deadpan; the desire to avert your eyes from the screen rivals one's curiosity of seeing the cringe-inducing episode in all of its glory.

For a film that started with a bang, Superbad is a fine, affable film that ultimately gets bogged down by structure. It's a pity that for most of Superbad's duration, the writers devoted much of the screen time to a series of misadventures encountered by our two misfit heroes (Seth and Evan) and their mutual cling-along friend, Fogell. The exchanges between lifelong buds Seth (Jonah Hill) and Evan (Michael Cera), about to be separated by senior year's end, are wonderfully banal and deadpan; the chemistry between Hill and Cera, effortless. Unfortunately, it seemed as if writers Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, who collaboarated on the semi-autobiographical script, pulled out all the stops and wanted to write in as much "Reno 911"-esque gags as possible to pass the time away. The whole McLovin' fake-ID/convenient store hold-up subplot was funny enough. But the humor started to feel tedious and repetitive once McLovin'/Fogell carousel with two clueless cops (one of whom is played by Rogen, himself), Seth and Evan bum a ride with a weird stranger, and a bunch of gags go awry. The uninspired middle section felt like a poor excuse for bookend's sake. By the time, Seth gets his pants soiled by a bump-'n'-grinding female reveler (as a fertile woman well in to her early twenties, I say: how the f-ck is this possible?), I felt as if the film was heading towards tedious primetime skit territory.

It is only when Seth, Evan, and Fogell make their long-awaited entrance to the party that everything wrong seems right again. As the night draws to a close, and the trio socialize with the girls - with mixed success - Seth and Evan eventually end up where they should be: in each others' arms. Although the "next morning" sequence is played for laughs (I'm glad the writers of Superbad have the balls to admit the homoerotic undercurrent of most heterosexual male friendships), it also feels very genuine - and dare I say, poignant. These boys may not know anything about girls. They do, however, know and understand each other a lot. And that's where their heart really belongs.

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