'Superbad' Opens in Theaters this Weekend

'Superbad' is Super Funny and Super Raunchy

Compiled by Sean Axmaker, SeattlePi.com

"Superbad," a raucous and raunchy comedy from producer Judd Apatow and director Greg Mottola, is the 21st-century love child of "American Pie" and "Dazed and Confused."

Behind its floridly foul streams of profanity and its adolescent preoccupation with sex and alcohol, this is a smart evocation of teenage insecurity and the irrational acts raging hormones can inspire.

The day-in-the-life adventure sends high school seniors and lifelong best buddies Seth (Jonah Hill, "Knocked Up") and Evan (Michael Cera, "Arrested Development"), misfits on the bottom of the high school pecking order, on a quest for booze to impress the girls of their dreams.

Their odyssey encompasses the ludicrous fake ID ("I am McLovin!") of their even geekier third wheel Fogell (Christopher Mintz-Plasse, impressively comfortable in his spazziness) and a pair of staggeringly gullible cops. Officer Slater (Bill Hader, "Hot Rod") and Officer Michaels ("Knocked Up" star Seth Rogen, who co-wrote "Superbad") turn out to be grown-up geeks with guns.

But underneath the precarious adventures in grownup-land is an undercurrent of frustration and panic.

The teen sex comedy is still largely a boys club and "Superbad," while giving the girls a little dignity and dimension, is no different, focusing on the bonds of male friendship stressed by growing up and growing away.

But it's refreshingly frank about the young male obsession with sex and the way the fantasy promise of Internet porn and late night cable movies collides with the complexity of real girls in the flesh.