Superbad

Or, the Seth Rogen show keeps on rolling. Not only is he in the film but he wrote it as well. I either deeply love this man or hate him with a vengeance thanks to unrelenting jealousy! Nah it's the former.

Superbad's your usual high school losers trying to get their Nat King before they leave for college film, so far so done in that one where the guy rides a pie. The strengths of Superbad lie in ignoring the done to death setup and just savouring the little things. The constant stream of witty one-liners bouncing between the characters (very Apatowian (is that a word? IT IS NOW!)), the absurd set pieces, like the best fanny blood scene you're ever likely to see, the whole drawing penises back story (Mr. T cock anyone?). And of course McLovin.

Ah McLovin. Your usual loser nerd who thinks he's the dug's haw maws so he changes his name from Fogell to that because he actually thinks it's cool. You've seen the type of character before but McLovin is rendered utterly brilliant by first timer Christopher Mintz-Plasse, who's name even suggests drippy nerd. The way he looks and moves and speaks screams pathetic loser, and yet he's the coolest character in the film thanks to his utter, at first mis-placed, sense of self-belief. His B-story is finer than the let's try and get some booze and score A-story. But this isn't entirely thanks to McLovin, but also the movie's second greatest creation - the loser cops, played by Rogen and SNL's Bill Hader. Here we have two guys who's initial instinct to being issued with a gun is to shoot it at anything and everything. Their misadventures with McLovin as they get hammered and try to actually police is one of the funniest storylines in who knows how long.

That's not to say that the A-story with Seth and Evan isn't brilliant as well. It may be riddled with cliches in the actual plotting, they end up at an older person's party riddled with violence and drugs while trying to find booze to take to a high school party where they will attempt to lose their virginity before graduating, but the events within are inspired. Like Rogen's mentor Apatow it balances grossout with heart. For every run of dick and great Mum tits jokes there's also explorations of what happens to friendship when academic achievement gets in the way or why hot girls won't go for the fat guy. And it's all played well by Knocked Up's Jonah Hill (another in the unfortunate face not getting in the way of Hollywood success a la Rogen school) and Arrested Development's Michael Cera (one of the finest awkward reactors in the business).

So, is it better than Knocked Up? Difficult to say. Knocked Up has more laughs but Superbad is more tightly scripted. The setpieces are better and it enjoys an ideal comedy running time, whereas Knocked Up pushed it a little. Both are definitely the funniest films of the year so far and ones that will be well served by DVD. I have to watch both again before making a decision though. Either way, summer of 2007 belongs to one man, but since Jason Bourne's fictional I'll give it to Seth Rogen for some stellar work in two movies. Shamefully things will actually be expected of him now which usually leads to the inevitable mis-fire. Fingers crossed it doesn't.