Metacritic Film

Superbad

Starring Jonah Hill, Michael Cera, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Bill Hader, Seth Rogen, Emma Stone, Martha MacIsaac, and Aviva

MPAA RATING: R for pervasive crude and sexual content, strong language, drinking, some drug use and a fantasy/comic violent image - all involving teens

Sony Pictures
Comedy
114 minutes | Color
USA
Released In Theaters August 17, 2007

Superbad is a coming-of-age cautionary tale about two socially inept teenage boys about to graduate high school. Theirs is a ridiculously dependent friendship--but now they've gotten into different colleges and are forced to contemplate life apart. Evan is sweet, smart, and generally terrified. Seth is foul-mouthed, volatile, and all-consumed with the topic of human sexuality. This is the story of their misguided attempts to reverse a lifelong losing streak with the ladies in one panic-driven night...that awful, humiliating night you cherish for the rest of your life. (Sony Pictures)

WRITTEN BY
Seth Rogen
Evan Goldberg

DIRECTED BY
Greg Mottola

Overall Metascore

This is a weighted, normalized average of all individual scores given by critics, on a scale of 0 (worst) to 100 (best).

76 / 100

Critic Reviews

100 San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle
For pure laughs, for the experience of just sitting in a chair and breaking up every minute or so, Superbad is 2007's most successful comedy.
100 New York Magazine David Edelstein
Might be the most provocative teen sex comedy ever made; it is certainly one of the most convulsively funny.
90 Newsweek David Ansen
As a "Revenge of the Nerds" redux, Superbad isn't perfect. But it's super close.
90 The New Yorker David Denby
An uproarious and touching picture.
90 Village Voice Scott Foundas
Superbad is duly ribald and often achingly funny, brewed from the now-familiar Apatow house blend of go-for-broke slapstick and instantly quotable, potty-mouthed dialogue.
90 Wall Street Journal Joanne Kaufman
What's most memorable, most striking about Superbad is the canny evocation of male friendship in all its richness and complexity.
88 Rolling Stone Peter Travers
It helps that the fun doesn't stop. It helps even more that the pitch-perfect script doesn’t step out of character for a joke.
88 Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
The movie is astonishingly foul-mouthed, but in a fluent, confident way where the point isn't the dirty words, but the flow and rhythm, and the deep, sad yearning they represent.
83 The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin
A funny, boozy, ramshackle party.
83 Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker
You don't have to be a teenager to appreciate the raunchy humor and the uninhibited overkill of Seth's porn-obsessed chatter, though it probably helps to be a guy.
80 Los Angeles Times Carina Chocano
What with everyone so focused on the raunchiness, it comes as a complete surprise to find that Superbad is in fact a love story.
80 Film Threat Michael Ferraro
Easily one of the funniest comedies of the year and one you wouldn’t mind seeing again and again.
78 Austin Chronicle Shawn Badgley
Mostly Superbad is as soulful and funky as its soundtrack.
75 Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum
Superbad is cute if you like guys who aren't even remotely bad, in a coming-of-age tale so old-fashioned the girls might just as well be wearing bloomers.
75 Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips
In this teen-boy universe, sex is everywhere and nowhere, it's oozing out of every pop culture pore and every other insane boast, yet the idea of figuring out how to talk to girls without turning into a yutz remains elusive.
75 ReelViews James Berardinelli
What if Quentin Tarantino collaborated with John Hughes on a teen comedy? Superbad is a decent approximation of what the result might be.
75 TV Guide Ken Fox
It's mostly very crude, often very funny and a little bit smarter than you might otherwise think.
75 New York Post Linda Stasi
Super-vulgar, ridiculously sophomoric, horribly nasty and so hilarious you’ll probably squirt Diet Coke out of your nose within the first 20 minutes.
75 Premiere Eric Alt
Superbad is just a great time, plain and simple.
75 Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez
Superbad never forgets the lesson one learns when looking back on one's awkward youth: Cool isn't just where society dictates; it is also where you find it.
75 New York Daily News Jack Mathews
There is a hint of sentimentality among the pals at the end, but not enough to offset the film's harmless combination of camaraderie and wished-for - oh, how they wish for it - debauchery.
75 Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey
Intermittently hilarious if also interminable.
75 Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy
Filled with nasty, nasty stuff.
75 Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow
The movie is best when everything is up in the air.
75 USA Today Claudia Puig
Side-splitting laughter, along with some powerful cringing, are likely to be audiences' dominant reactions.
70 Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek
Its pleasures and charms lie in its very crudeness, in the way the characters' thoughts begin in their d---s and spill out of their mouths, completely bypassing their brains.
70 The Hollywood Reporter Stephen Farber
Some of the patter is funny, but the movie lacks the clever plot developments and the character nuances of a classic like "American Graffiti." And it's missing the belly laughs of earlier raunchfests "American Pie" and "There's Something About Mary."
70 Variety Todd McCarthy
The bawdy jokes score big points, but it's the rueful acknowledgement of adolescent embarrassment and humiliation that most distinguishes Superbad, another ultra-raunchy and commercial sex comedy from the Judd Apatow laugh factory.
70 Chicago Reader J.R. Jones
The movie loses credibility with the arrival of Rogen and Bill Hader as two uniformed patrolmen who are drunker and crazier than any high schooler could ever get, but the variety of complications thrown at the three pubescent heroes raises this a cut above most raunchy comedies.
70 The New York Times Manohla Dargis
Horny is as horny does in the sweetly absurd high school comedy Superbad.
70 Washington Post Ann Hornaday
Christopher Mintz-Plasse steals the movie in his screen debut as a nerd di tutti nerds, a kid whose fake I.D. reads "McLovin."
63 The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey
Not super, but not bad, the teen comedy, Superbad, is another comic dance across the hormonal minefield of late high school.
60 Slate Dana Stevens
As lurching, awkward, and dirty-minded as the three horny man-boys at its center--but not, in the end, quite as funny or endearing.
50 Boston Globe Wesley Morris
As films about the young and the horny go, I preferred the smarter approach director Jeffrey Blitz takes in "Rocket Science."
50 Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman
Superbad simply isn't. It isn't super, as it intersperses crudely funny gags with an equal number of dry spots. It isn't ever truly bad, because even the lame segments pass quickly.
50 Time Richard Corliss
To find that valuable truth, you have to dig through an avalanche of d--- jokes and strenuous slapstick.

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