Flip through the latest issue of Gulf Weekly.
Superbad STARRING: Jonah Hill, Michael Cera, Christopher Mintz-Plasse
DIRECTOR: Greg Mottola
114 mins
Knocked Up has been denounced as misogynist anti-abortion propaganda. Variety editor Peter Bart has, Cassandra-like, called down on Apatow’s head The Curse of John Hughes: the 80s Teen Comedy king, once Tinseltown’s ruler but now fallen from those heights.
Respected film writer Joe Queenan says that Apatow fans like me and the New Yorker’s David Denby are just endorsing a ghastly male menopausal revenge-of-the-nerds conspiracy.
And perhaps most hurtfully of all, my progressive friends and companeros at a certain fortnightly satirical magazine have skittishly suggested we are in Mr Apatow’s promotional pocket – this, mark you, from people whose Christmas loo books I have praised to the very skies.
Oh, the humanity! Knocked Up isn’t misogynist. Unlike most other films, of whatever genre, it shows the sexual act in terms of its long-term consequences; it shows a professional woman keeping her career and the baby, tackling the difficulties of negotiating maternity leave, and shows her partner modifying his behaviour to support her choices.
Nobody, however, is going to defend Superbad in this way.
It is in the very well-worn American Pie/Porky’s tradition of ugly guys obsessed with getting laid, keg parties, fake IDs etc.
It’s immature, gross and – some of the time – very funny.
In some ways, Superbad is the prequel to Knocked Up: it shows what the slacker nerds were like in high school: ie exactly the same.
The lead character, fat and frizzy-haired Seth, is nakedly autobiographical; in Knocked Up, his girlfriend’s disapproving sister complains about how “heavy” he already is, and asks her to consider what this slob going to look like 10 years from now.
This is going backwards in time.
Seth (Jonah Hill) is permanently panicky and splenetic with the sallow, unhealthy look of a cardiac case; he is best friends with Evan (Michael Cera) but in denial about his sadness that they are about to be emotionally sundered: they got into different colleges.
With their other nerdy friend Fogell (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) they plan on forgetting these woes by meeting girls at an upcoming party.
Things go horrifically wrong when Fogell is picked up while trying to buy beverages by two incompetent cops, played by Bill Hader and Rogen himself.
And it soon becomes all too clear that these police officers are just as immature as they are, and cheerfully take their prisoner for a ride-along to witness their appalling professional procedures. There’s a very funny line from Rogen about the differences between CSI and real police work.
It’s pretty crass and pretty silly, but only a puritanical grump would deny it’s funny. – PB
There is no magic in Daniel Radcliffe’s first non-Potter movie: it’s an incredible clunker: naff, sentimental, like an episode of the treacly US TV show The Wonder Years, full of golden summery memories and riddled with irritating, unconvincing child acting.
Radcliffe is the oldest of a group of boys at a 1960s Australian orphanage who are allowed a wonderful holiday by the sea.
There are tears and laughter and for Radcliffe a coyly dramatised sexual awakening with a local girl. Nothing about it rings true and the touches of whimsy and fantasy are toe-curlingly awful. – PB
Peter Mullan stars as a rough-diamond trawlerman, pitching across a churning
Steve Hudson’s urgent Scottish drama does well in evoking a hardscrabble climate of mutual dependency.
If only the characters were a little less stock and the script more waterproofed. Halfway through our journey, the cliches start seeping in. – XB
