Two unpopular Nevada high school seniors make a pact to lose their virginities before graduation. Seth and Evan have been best friends since childhood, and they are about to attend different colleges. Jules invites Seth to a party at her house. Fogell has a fake ID. Seth promises to buy Jules alcohol, Evan offers the same to Becca, and the night goes wrong from there.
Trailer, via Sony Pictures Entertainment.
Fogell and the Name McLovin
The engine of Superbad is a fake ID with one name on it: McLovin. Fogell, played by Christopher Mintz-Plasse in his film debut, walks into a liquor store and tries to buy alcohol under that mononym. The clerk accepts it and starts to ring up the transaction. Then a robber knocks Fogell down before he can pay.
Seth and Evan are outside. They see police officers Slater and Michaels arrive and believe their friend is being arrested. Seth gets hit by a motorist while waiting. The motorist, to keep them from reporting him, promises to drive them to another party where they can get alcohol. The officers, meanwhile, take Fogell’s statement and agree to drive him to the party themselves.
Officers Slater and Michaels
Bill Hader and Seth Rogen play the two cops, and they are the film’s best invention. They drink on duty. They bond with Fogell. They commit to a run of shenanigans that has nothing to do with law enforcement and everything to do with two grown men refusing to grow up.
Rogen co-wrote the script with Evan Goldberg, and he was originally meant to play Seth. Age and physical size killed that plan. Jonah Hill took Seth, and Rogen took Officer Michaels instead, opposite Hader as Officer Slater. The swap was the right call. Rogen as a teenager would have been a stunt. Rogen as a bad cop is a fact.
Come and get some!
Seth, Evan, and the Party
The party at Jules’s house is where the film’s two threads meet. Seth plans to steal alcohol. Evan is hesitant to stay. The motorist gets kicked out by the host, and a fight starts. Evan decides to leave despite Seth’s insistence that he stay.
Seth dances with a drunk Jacinda, who stains his leg with menstrual blood. The party’s host confronts Seth for dancing with his fiancée. A brawl follows. The police are called. Seth and Evan reunite outside and escape.
That sequence is the film’s thesis in miniature. Every plan Seth makes collapses, and every collapse is funnier than the plan. The movie does not punish him for wanting the night to go a certain way. It just keeps taking the night away from him.
Two Debuts and a Cast That Fills the Edges
Emma Stone plays Jules, and this is her film debut. Martha MacIsaac plays Becca. Aviva Baumann plays Nicola. Joe Lo Truglio is Francis the Driver, Kevin Corrigan is Mark, and Clement Blake is the Homeless Guy. Erica Vittina Phillips is the liquor store cashier who waves McLovin through.
The supporting cast is not decoration. The film works because every minor part is played straight. The clerk, the robber, the motorist, the fiancée — none of them know they are in a comedy. That is why the comedy lands.
A Script Written in High School
Rogen and Goldberg wrote Superbad during their teenage years. It is loosely based on their experience in Grade 12 at Point Grey Secondary School in Vancouver during the 1990s. The two main characters share given names with the two writers. That is not a marketing line. It is the reason the dialogue has a specific texture: two people who have talked to each other so long that neither finishes a sentence.
Greg Mottola directed. Judd Apatow produced. The film runs 113 minutes and premiered at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre on August 13, 2007. It opened in the United States four days later, on August 17.
The Fight Outside the Party
The last act is the argument. Seth chastises Evan for bailing on him. He reminds Evan that they had lifelong plans to attend college together. Evan retorts that Seth is selfish and holds him back.
This is the scene the film has been building toward, and it is not a joke. Two friends who have defined themselves by each other are being separated by something as ordinary as an admissions letter. The booze, the fake ID, the cops, the brawl — all of it is a delaying tactic. The real subject is a friendship that has run out of room.
What Superbad Gets Right
Superbad grossed $170.8 million on a budget of $17.5–20 million. It drew positive reviews, with critics praising the dialogue and the chemistry between Hill and Cera, plus the supporting cast. It has since become a cult classic.
Here is what matters in that record. The money is a fact about the market. The chemistry is a fact about the film. Hill and Cera play two people who are genuinely fond of each other and genuinely sick of each other, and the movie never picks a side. That balance is harder than it looks. Most teen comedies make one friend the hero and the other the obstacle. Superbad lets both be right.
The parts that have aged less well are the parts that were always the weakest. The menstrual blood gag is a shock with no second move. The homeless guy is a prop. The film’s willingness to go gross is not the same thing as its willingness to be funny, and Superbad occasionally confuses the two.
What holds up is the structure. The night keeps escalating, and every escalation comes from a character choice rather than a coincidence. Seth promises alcohol he cannot buy. Evan promises alcohol he does not want to buy. Fogell offers an ID that works and then gets robbed. The cops offer a ride and then abandon their jobs. Nobody in this film is unlucky. Everybody is making a decision.
Ranked by what actually earns its place in the film:
- The argument outside the party — the only scene that matters after the credits.
- Hader and Rogen as Slater and Michaels — a two-man show that could carry its own movie.
- Mintz-Plasse as Fogell — one name, one joke, and it never gets old.
- The liquor store robbery — the pivot the whole plot turns on.
- The dance and the brawl — loud, messy, and the least of the set pieces.
The film’s reputation rests on the first two. The rest is the reason it runs 113 minutes instead of 90.
Superbad is a comedy about two people who are bad at being teenagers and good at being friends, and it knows the difference. It is not a great film. It is a film with a great center and a lot of slack around it, and the center is strong enough to carry the slack. The tagline promises a fight. The movie delivers a breakup.
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