Author Archives: natezoebl
Eastern Promises (2007)
Director David Cronenberg is an idiosyncratic director who explores Big Ideas through the context of creepy horror movies where the body is violated. He’s covered everything from evil gnome-like children, ravenous monsters in Marilyn Chambers’ armpit, and Jeff Goldblum’s face unfortunately peeling away. But then Cronenberg struck it big with 2005’s A History of Violence, giving him the highest profile of his long Canadian career. The auteur of ick is now back in a similarly themed tale of the true impacts of bloodshed with Eastern Promises, a gripping and thoughtful work.
Anna (Naomi Watts) is a midwife working in London and come across a young Russian girl who dies in childbirth. She leaves behind a diary that Anna seeks to have translated so that she can find family members to contact about the newborn. This brings her unknowingly to the doorstep of Senyon (Armin Mueller-Stahl) who runs a restaurant in London’s Russian district. She inquires if Senyon or any of the employees knew the dead girl, and as soon as Senyon hears about the reality of a diary he becomes more concerned. And he should be since he is the head of one of London’s most notorious organized crime families. His loose canon of a son, Kirill (Vincent Cassel), has authorized a hit behind his father’s back and repercussions may soon be approaching. Nikolai (Viggo Mortensen) serves as the family’s chauffeur but takes an interest in Anna and is willing to assist her as she stumbles into impending danger the more she translates from the diary.
Much like writer Steven Knight’s excellent previous film Dirty Pretty Things, this is a film that shines a light on the underbelly of London and focuses on the immigrant experience and how apt they are to be exploited. Eastern Promises is both a straightforward crime thriller with an intriguing, albeit simple central mystery, but then as it moves along it transforms into something far richer. Through the diary, we uncover the hidden inner workings of the Russian mafia, which is a truly global enterprise. Women are promised with great riches and freedoms in their Slavic homeland, and then once transported will spend the rest of their lives behind the bars of a whorehouse, kept dependent thanks to a drug habit forced upon them. We’re immersed in the culture of this crime family. Eastern Promises takes its noirsh sensibilities and then gives us the foreboding and enigmatic Nikolai, a mysterious figure that the audience, like Anna, is drawn to. He spent time in a Siberian prison and is covered in telling tattoos that serve as a resume for the mafia. Nikolai is such a dominating presence and proves to be more intriguing than the central diary mystery, and it’s here where the film performs a balancing act and transfers our attentions fully to this brooding brute.
Cronenberg subverts his usual irony and weirdness to stay true to his tale, and this may well be, even more so than A History of Violence, the most accessible Cronenberg movie yet. We’re a long way from flesh-eating-monster-in-Marilyn-Chambers’-armpit. He still works with such compact efficiency so that no scene feels wasted, and Eastern Promises is a brisk 1 hour 40 minutes. Where Eastern Promises really succeeds is by layering in strong characters within a relatively genre movie. People are not exactly who they seem and the actors do their best to give remarkable depth to their roles.
Cronenberg seems to have found an actor that shares his artistic sensibilities. Scorsese has Leonardo DiCaprio, Wes Anderson has Bill Murray, Kevin Smith has Ben Affleck, and now Cronenberg has Viggo Mortensen. I never thought much of Mortensen as an actor until Cronenberg unlocked something deep and mesmerizing in their first pairing. With Eastern Promises, Mortensen establishes himself as an extremely capable actor. Nikolai is a complex figure and he Mortensen displays a mastery of understatement; his stony silences and piercing stares speak volumes, but you can practically watch the decision-making of the character pass through the face of Mortensen. He skillfully displays the good inside a man bred for evil.
Watts is an actress with few equals and she dazzles once more in a role that requires her to do a lot of legwork. And yet, there’s a sad, haunting quality to her thanks to the back-story where she lost a child due to miscarriage. Cassel is also impressive in a complicated role that requires a lot of internal languishing. He’s at one an impudent child willing to live high off the power of his family name, and at other times he comes across as a severely wounded man who cannot thrive in his hostile family (both little and big F) environment. There are interesting revelations that make Kirill a much more complex and captivating figure, and Cassel plays the many dimensions very well. Personally, I’m happy to see Armin Mueller-Stahl in another high profile movie. There was a time shortly after his 1996 Oscar nomination for Shine where if you needed an old guy for a movie, you got the Armin. Lately, it seems James Cromwell has taken his place as go-to old guy. In Eastern Promises, he has such a sly menace to him from the moment his ears prick up at the notion of a diary. He insists upon inserting himself into Anna’s life and casually makes remarks like, “You know where I work, now I know where you work,” with just the right amount of finesse to sound intimidating and yet potentially harmless.
One scene I will never forget is when Nikolai is ambushed in a bathhouse by two revenge-hungry thugs. He sits there naked and exposed and these two unhappy gentlemen descend upon him (fully clothed) with knives. Nikolai fights like a wounded animal and manages to successfully take down both men even though he is unarmed and un-clothed. Up to this point the character has been something of a gentle giant, knowing the vicious ways of the Russian mob but seemingly at distance from them for whatever ethical decision. But it’s at this moment that we bare witness, no pun intended, to the cagey survival instincts of a man who must live his life looking over his shoulder. It’s a bravura scene that is played out in agonizing detail. Nikolai is slashed and thrown against tiled walls (much penis-related mayhem is glimpsed), but he keeps coming back and knows precisely when to strike. It really is the actors doing all the hard knocks and brawling, which heightens the tension. Cronenberg stages the violence in his realistic drawn-out style, which horrifies an audience while simultaneously fascinating them. This is by far one of the most indelible film moments of the entire year.
Eastern Promises is an engaging character-based thriller, and yet I wish it finished as strongly as it began. This is the kind of movie where much is implied or said in silence, which works great at respecting the intelligence of an audience as well as staying consistent with a believable reality where everyone in such dangerous positions is not explaining everything aloud. However, one of the drawbacks of a film where much is implied is that when it’s over you may wish that they implied less and showed more. The climax to Eastern Promises is a little weak, especially when it comes shortly after the incredible bathhouse attack. There’s a very hazy sense of a resolution. From an artistic standpoint, I suppose I can appreciate a thriller that doesn’t feel the need to end with a pile of dead bodies and much blood being spilt, but at the same time, from an audience point of view, I was really left wanting for more when the film finally comes to a halt.
Thanks to a smart, twisty script, Cronenberg’s sharp yet quirk-free direction, and some stirring performances, Eastern Promises is a first-rate thriller with the added benefit of strong characterization to add richer depth to this tale of mobsters, retribution, and sex slavery. Mortensen is the real deal when it comes to acting, folks. Cronenberg may have found a true match with Mortensen, and the added cache may give the director greater financial opportunities to tell more intriguing tales that may or may not feature ravenous armpits.
Nate’s Grade: B+
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Disturbia (2007)
This Rear Window for the Facebook generation starts off strong with a solid performance by Shia LeBouf, but then quickly unravels once the filmmakers think they’re desperately running out of time. The teasing mystery is set up well and elicits some interest, but then, as if afraid of lulling an audience to sleep with a story that takes its damn time, Disturbia throws everything and the kitchen sink at you in the last 20 minutes. The movie falls on its face (the metaphors are flying today) trying to make up for lost time with jump scares and lame thriller conventions. The end gets a tad absurd as well as Shia discovers his serial killer neighbor isn’t just a murderer, but he’s a home decorator on par with the creature from Jeepers Creepers. By the time Shia falls into an underground water cavern filled with corpses, I wanted to scream myself for such wasted potential to a film that seemed like a formless rip-off on the surface.
Grade: C+
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Fracture (2007)
This is a genre movie, pure and simple, but it has a tricky plot and is aided by two exceptionally high caliber performances from Anthony Hopkins, once again personifying evil and confidence, and Ryan Gosling. He imbues such meaty resonance to a character that would have seemed flimsy and altogether stock in another actor’s hands. Gosling and Hopkins have great tit-for-tat moments where each is trying to outwit the other, and their verbal chess match provides the best scenes in this procedural thriller. The disintegrating murder case keeps the audience guessing, but it’s Hopkins and Gosling that elevate the material into delicious crackling Southern-fried entertainment.
Nate’s Grade: B
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Away From Her (2007)
Actress Sarah Polley makes a remarkable directorial/screenwriting debut telling the story of a couple going through the late stages of Alzheimer’s. This is a truly adult tale that deals in the heartbreak of losing a loved one gradually and slowly. The film centers on a long-standing marriage that endures the hardships of becoming a victim in your own mind, first forgetting small things and then finally shutting down completely. While plenty of films have articulately dealt with the point of view of the afflicted, I feel Away from Her is one of the better perspectives on seeing the devastating effects of the illness from the spouse. The movie deals with its real world dilemmas in a respectful and realistic manner and Polley has put herself on the map as a thoughtful, mature, and engrossing talent to watch whenever she hops behind the camera.
Nate’s Grade: B+
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Breach (2007)
Chris Cooper is masterful in an unnerving and deeply contradictory role as a man of God, country, patriotism, and family. He was a respected FBI expert eventually discovered to be the biggest mole in U.S. intelligence history, directly responsible for the deaths of U.S. spies and interests in Russia during the Cold War. Writer/director Billy Ray infuses the film with the same stoic, controlled calm of his exceptional earlier effort Shattered Glass, and the movie unwinds like a great political thriller from the 1970s. The story is smart and engaging but it is Cooper that turns Breach into one of the best films of 2007. His performance is as varied and complex as the man he is portraying; frightening and intimidating but also empathetic and bound by a sense of honor, Cooper gives a performance that plays upon ambiguity and understatement. Watch the way he even drives people into walls when he walks alongside them in hallways. It’s that kind of intense, highly focused, and morally challenging work that deserves an Oscar nomination.
Nate’s Grade: A
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Ghost Rider (2007)
Nicolas Cage’s career has been flaming out, so what better role than a burning skeleton biker who serves as a bounty hunter for the Devil, in this case Peter Fonda. A cliché-riddled script, laughable performances, cheesy effects and dull villains doom any entertainment prospects this movie might have had. Cage, as the titular rider, gets to fight a group of escaped demons who all have one connection to an element; one has the power of fire, another the power of wind, etc., it’s like a hellish Captain Planet squad. But what’s the point when Ghost Rider simply vanquishes them so easily? It’s repetitive and goes nowhere. There’s one moment Sam Elliot “turns” into an older ghost rider/bounty hunter and rides along with Cage to save the day. But then he says, “Well, I could only do that once more, so good luck.” What? You could only turn into a flaming ass kicker one more time and you wasted it on riding a horsey through the desert? Eva Mendes is awful as her role of “girlfriend from past,” and why, if she and Cage grew up as childhood sweethearts, does he look over 15 years older than her in the present? I guess working for Satan can really take a lot out of you.
Nate’s Grade: D
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The Kingdom (2007)
Now that summer is but a hazy memory, get ready for a roll out of serious minded movies Hollywood hopes vie for serious award attention. It may be five years into the current war, but the movies are now cranking out Iraq-themed dramas that will dominate the release schedule for the approaching months. Things are about to get heavy and somber. First out of the gate, though, is The Kingdom, a film about the nebulously termed War on Terror set within the confines of an action movie. Actor-turned-director Peter Berg (Friday Night Lights, The Rundown) knows how to create a stylized movie that feels organic to its genre, and The Kingdom is another example of his growing cinematic pedigree.
In Saudi Arabia, a housing enclosure of American contractors and their families is brutally attacked by terrorists that have infiltrated the Saudi security. Two hundred American lives are lost and FBI agent Ronald Fluery (Jamie Foxx) is intent on leading a team of experts (Chris Cooper, Jennifer Garner, Jason Bateman) to the soil of the Saudis, otherwise known as The Kingdom. The State Department refuses to authorize an investigation citing the jurisdiction of the Saudis as well as the danger of violent reprisals if agents are within reach of the perpetrators. Colonel Faris Al Ghazi (Ashraf Barhom) is assigned to baby-sit the American agents and keep them stuck in red tape during their five days allotted to them. Fluery refuses to take a subservient role and works with Al Ghaazi to get some answers.
The animated opening credit crash course in Saudi history is fun and informative, however, it really doesn’t relate to The Kingdom even though the damn movie is set in that country. Curiously, the movie only makes cursory statements on the wary relationship between the Saudis and the United States, but otherwise this movie could have been dropped in any nondescript Muslim country in the Middle East. If The Kingdom was relocated to, say, Yemen, I doubt the script would need that much fine-tuning; snip some references to royalty here and there. This is a story about the balance between a moderate Middle East regime and radical elements within the country willing to buck Western influence by any destructive means necessary. I’m measurably disappointed that the movie didn’t tackle more about the unique and tenuous Saudi-U.S. relationship, but then I accepted the fact that The Kingdom wasn’t so much about a country but an ideology that knows no borders.
To that end, The Kingdom is one part CSI: Saudi Arabia, one part political thriller, and one part gung-ho Hollywood action extravaganza, and none of the parts seems to work well together as a whole. The film doesn’t work as a cohesive unit and perhaps tries to do too much. Now, this does not mean that any of those parts are not entertaining. The criminal investigating is rather interesting because of all the cultural barriers between the U.S. agents and the Saudi governing system (a miscast Jeremy Piven, as an ambassador, admonishes Janet, in a very Ari Gold way, to “dial down the boobies”). The central mystery of who is responsible is pretty thin and easy to solve, which may be why the film spends so much time finding obstacles to delay our FBI team from getting their hands on the evidence. The political thriller elements are expressed with the subtlety of a sledgehammer, and yet they feel like thoughtful counterpoints to any rah-rah jingoism that The Kingdom may instill in an American audience. The climax provides plenty of fist-pumping violence but it also ends on a note about the futility of violence as well as the durability of hate. I even appreciated devoting time to interdepartmental jockeying and watching agency heads seeing who will blink first in a public relations-dominated world. The Kingdom doesn’t have a desire to become Syriana 2: No Blood for Oil, but it does possess a greater deal of intelligence and relevance than most of what big budget Hollywood is spewing out (I refuse to believe the FBI would send an agent, with a personal family tie to Israel, into a Muslim country).
Strict action fans, however, are going to have a lot of downtime on their hands. The Kingdom opens with an action sequence and closes with an action sequence, and there’s a wide gap in between those bookends. The final 20 minutes are devoted to a nail-biting ambush and rescue that transforms our FBI agents into improbable action movie warriors. Berg’s restless camera isn’t as well honed as Paul Greengraas (The Bourne Ultimatum), and sometimes you just wish the jittery cameraman would allow you to see what’s going on. I don’t know if the docu-drama emphasis is fully needed, especially when the movie jumps between shots of just two people having a conversation. Berg is a terrific director and the action sequences hit hard; I just hope he doesn’t become trapped trying to fit himself into one style.
In truth, the most intriguing part of The Kingdom is the relationship between Fleury and Al Ghazi. They begin frustrated and fighting for control, but soon, in true buddy cop genre fashion, a mutual respect forms as they search for the bad guys. The script offers helpful examples of good Movie Arabs and bad Movie Arabs, and the audience is able to easily identify the two sides. The interplay between Fleury and Al Ghazi leads to some humorous exchnages as well as some reflective opportunities, like where the men recount their families and declare they do not care why such dastardly acts were done, they just want to inflict some punishment on the rightful parties.
The acting, like the film, is a bit all over the place. Foxx seems to be on autopilot. Foxx has bunkered into his acting troupes; intense, penetrating stare, whispery dialogue recitations, and a cocksure attitude. Cooper is cranky and incredulous older timer along for the ride. Garner does her best with a character that was written for the sole purpose of concocting culture squabbles over the role of the opposite sex. She does unleash a torrent of anger and power in one very hard-core and frighteningly extreme fight scene. Bateman is playing comic relief and does sarcastic quips with great ease, but his character also gets unexpectedly thrown into a very harrowing experience and Bateman makes you feel every drop of his fear. Barhom (Paradise Now) gives a convincing performance of a man torn apart by his moral compass and the path of his country. He feels a sense of duty to protect the innocent but at the same time he is scoffed at by colleagues for helping “them.”
The Kingdom is an action movie with more on its mind than blowing up the enemy real nice like, though that also plays a key component. The pieces don’t fully add up to a whole and the film’s politics are a little tricky to get a bearing on; is this a red state movie, a blue state movie, or something for both audiences? Berg’s ambition is admirable and his film never drags out a soapbox to preach. The Kingdom is a topical movie aimed at planting seeds of debate among a mainstream audience in between their handfuls of popcorn and gulps of soda.
Nate’s Grade: B-
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The Brave One (2007)
The Brave One, when distilled to its purest essence, is Jodie’s Foster’s Death Wish, but there isn’t anything necessarily wrong about exploring this scuzzy territory again with a fresh set of eyes. The film chronicles a New York City radio host (Foster) who is the victim of a brutal attack that leaves her boyfriend dead and her in a coma for three weeks. Shattered and hardened, she buys a gun for her own protection and finds herself in situations that require one. The Brave One features a lot of audience-approved ass kicking and an absurd amount of dangerous scenarios that Foster seems to casually find on a nightly basis. But what separates The Brave One from the usual grisly pap of the genre is that it refuses to pander to audience bloodlust. Director Neil Jordan (The Crying Game) complicates a simple case of vengeance by making an audience contemplate the true ramifications of violence and whether they are ultimately worth the price. Foster gives a ragged and emotionally raw performance. She discovers how easy killing comes to her and Foster struggles to keep her crumbling sense of humanity, with her last tie to the working world is her friendship with a deeply compassionate cop (Terrence Howard, terrific yet again). The most affecting moments are between Foster and Terrence as they construct a rather moving companionship where each feels out the other and Foster actively tries to avoid getting caught. The end of The Brave One certainly could have followed through with its morally ambiguous deliberations and open-ended questions, but while its climax does pull some punches it doesn’t wrap everything up with a bow either. This is high-end work for a guilty pleasure genre most noted for having its morals face down in the gutter. Now what the hell does the title refer to?
Nate’s Grade: B
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Premonition (2007)
Linda (Sandra Bullock) is having a unique martial crisis. Her husband Jim (Julian McMahon) has died in a horrific car accident and she must now raise their two daughters by her lonesome. Or so she thinks, because she wakes up the next night and Jim is alive and well and enjoying a hot cup of java. Linda is perplexed and finds herself living the days of this week out of sequence. One day Jim is alive and the next day he isn’t. She plots to use her knowledge to save her husband if it’s even possible to defy fate.
Premonition is in hopeless want to be a modern-day version of Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five with the added sprinkle of a Lifetime movie. Linda is, like in Vonnegut’s classic sci-fi novel, unstuck in her time, however, the time has been pared down significantly to a mere week. Thankfully the movie has enough sense not to implicitly try to make sense of why this is happening to her, though she does visit a priest who has conveniently studied this sort of crazy thing (short answer: God is testing your faith). The problem with limiting the timeline to just seven days is that when Linda makes her quantum leaps the audience is left scrambling to figure out when she is. This works in placing the audience alongside Linda in confusion, but it gives no sense of overview or clarity and the events aren’t significant enough to warrant being memorable enough to connect cause and effect. The narrative structure is purposely jumbled but it’s also missing suspense if we never know what’s going on. Hey, I’m not even asking for much either, just some titles indicating the days would be helpful.
The people that populate this film behave in completely contrite ways because the half-baked story demands it of them. When Linda finds her daughter’s face covered in scratches for the first time, she asks what happened to her. Instead of actually answering, the child remains silent because apparently that would spoil the dramatic surprise of her running into a glass door. Wow, that was worth it, and it must have been something so traumatic that neither of Linda’s daughters could casually mention it. A child would not behave this way. The only way this would make sense is if the contriteness got kicked up a notch and the little girl got a sliding door-bound case of laryngitis. Like romantic comedies, Premonition is a movie that needs to survive due to no one ever having a rationale conversation explaining all that they know to dispel misconceptions. This whole dumb sliding door incident is made even worse when Linda’s mother wants to have the children removed from their mother’s custody because of those scratches. Huh? Would she not know too that it was an accident? And just one more reason to hate this plot point: when Linda tells her daughters that their daddy is dead the little girl does not have scratches, however, in the timeline, she ran into the door the day before. The day after the death, and two days after she broke the door, the glass is replaced because I suppose that took priority over mourning. The discontinuity is terrible.
Also, when Linda gets the tiniest whiff that her (sometimes dearly departed) husband was even contemplating infidelity, she performs a full 180 on the spot and coldly considers letting him die as punishment. The speed of her abrupt about-face is a cheap roadblock to squeeze more tension out of this dumb story. I won’t even mention how lazy it is to have a priest who’s an expert on “unstuck time” living nearby.
The plot may be maddening, but I think Premonition was meant to be a comedy because it’s not an effective thriller. The movie’s feeble attempts at attaching scares to its central puzzle are astounding bad. This is the type of film that not only thinks a dead crow is spooky but that the mystery of what happened to the dead crow is integral to audience satisfaction. It’s hard to believe that Premonition preoccupies so much time with the mini timeline of one dead bird. There are cheap jump scares in abundance but no lasting tension of sense of unease because the filmmakers have left the audience in the dark. There is one horrendous moment where the funeral pallbearers drop the casket and Jim’s head snaps and rolls out. You know they’re not getting any repeat business.
Premonition has an ending that just lays there in utter defiance of taste, causing the audience to upturn their nose in disbelief as if they had just discovered someone defecating in a store aisle. The ending is terrible and grasps for some kind of deeper Twilight Zone level of irony, but instead what comes across is a clumsy, irritating, and plain idiotic excuse at futility. It really calls into question whether or not the movie had any point. Premonition was beyond redemption but its stinker of an ending and Linda’s voice over summation will cause you to roll your eyes at incredible speeds.
Bullock is in new territory with Premonition, though she dabbled with time travel in last year’s The Lake House. She’s in way over her head and cannot effectively convey any of Linda’s increasingly ragged emotions. I laughed out loud several times as Bullock tried to express her growing apprehension, and her take on the line, “Because we’re running out of time,” had me in stitches. Her performance isn’t particularly embarrassing but more of an exasperating reaction to all the mess surrounding her. Bullock may want to stick to her romantic comedy wheelhouse.
Personally, if I was unstuck through time and needed some help figuring out important events, I would leave a lot of Post-It notes for myself filling me in on what I know. That would make sense; this movie doesn’t in any capacity. Bullock, writer Bill Kelly, and director Mennan Yapo need to wake up the day before they ever started to make Premonition and then they can spare us all. Then again, I suppose we can only fight fate one sliding door at a time.
Nate’s Grade: D+
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Superbad (2007)
Seth Rogen makes me feel like a slacker. I’m two months older than him, but already he’s broken out as a comic actor on great-but-cancelled shows like Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared, and now he has risen to headlining star thanks to the runaway success of Knocked Up. Now here comes Superbad, a comedy he’s co-written with his friend Evan Goldberg, and I haven’t even gotten one movie off the ground or, for that matter, a starring role in any TV series, canceled or on the air. Oh well. At least Rogen’s consistent attachment to quality projects makes me a happy, if marginally envious, moviegoer.
Seth (Jonah Hill) and Evan (Michael Cera) are high school seniors looking to score with the ladies. Their nerdy friend Fogell (Chistopher Mintz-Plasse) has a scheme to get himself a fake ID, and the trio seizes upon this opportunity to become important figures in the teen circuit. With the promise of the fake ID, Jules (Emma Stone) has asked Seth to provide all the alcohol for a house part that she’s throwing that night. Not only that, Evan’s unrequited crush Becca (Martha MacIsaac) is going to be there. Seth and Evan figure that this party will be the best chance they have ever had to get lucky thanks to the miracles of what some would call, “liquid panty remover.” They just have to get the booze first. Fogell’s ID lists him as simply as McLovin. He is set back when his attempt to purchase alcohol is interrupted by a robber. He’s interviewed by Officers Michaels (Rogen) and Slater (Bill Hader) who take a shine to McLovin (“It sounds like a sexy hamburger”). The threesome spend a madcap night drinking, busting crime, sharing worldly wisdom, and running away at the faintest sign of other police officers.
First off, Superbad is raucously funny. It’s plenty profane and has several memorable moments, like Seth’s imaginative scenarios for buying alcohol and a dance that goes in a very unexpected direction. The humor is timeless and built around the nervous interaction between the sexes; there are very few jokes that reference pop culture or dependent on a specific context. I imagine what makes Superbad hilarious will still make it hilarious in 20 years to a new audience that can relate to the same trials and tribulations of teen life, though perhaps at that point we will be replaced by robots.
What separates Superbad from other offensive sex comedies is that it’s really a story about male friendship. I don’t mean in the tacky, Hollywood vein of working together for a common goal, which is commonly to lose one’s virginity. Superbad is another entry into the Judd Apatow (40-Year Old Virgin, Knocked Up) school of comedy that professes that a comedy should be character-based and that those characters should be painfully human. This is no mere genre movie. Underneath all the boobs and booze discussion is the pain and worry of a long-standing friendship being able to survive. Seth and Evan have been close friends all of their lives, but many good friends have grown apart in time thanks to their lives moving in different places. There’s unspoken tension between the two of them and Seth is concerned he’s about to be abandoned by the person that means the most to him. Many films touch upon the indelible companionship between men but few can accurately articulate the authentic love that can foster bonds of friendship. Superbad explores the exploits of real friendship, and while it’s chock full of funny the film also has its fair share of moderately touching moments. You really do care about the characters and want them to triumph. Fogell’s ascension to becoming a confidant, cool lady’s man is one of the summer’s true pleasures. Apatow’s fingerprints are all over this, and that is a glorious thing.
But this isn’t some phony Porky’s-style high school sex comedy with male fantasy set pieces and lots of dunderheaded beauties prone to bouts of frequent nakedness. Superbad is a relatively realistic portrayal of high school life in the world of movies. This isn’t a school ordered by cliques of entrenched stereotypes like the jocks, the Goths, etc. In fact, I don’t think Superbad makes any social distinction between the students.
Superbad is a celebration of the glories and anxieties of the male members’ member. Even for a teen sex comedy, the film is very phallus-centric, complete with a hilarious anecdote about a “treasure chest of dick drawings.” It seems Seth, at a young age, was stricken with the unique compulsion to draw a phalanx of penises. The anecdote is quite unexpected and funny and underscores how often the penis prevails in the minds of young men. The boys discuss at length the life and times of the penis, especially how women can compliment this. The constant dick-chat may get old after a while for most of the female audience in attendance (a.k.a. those without), and I can’t exactly blame them, but Superbad does convey, in a convincing manner, how much teenagers think about sex (“You know how many foods are shaped like dicks? The best kind”). Some have argued that there’s an undercurrent of misogyny with Superbad, but I feel like those detractors are missing the deeper point. These guys are totally terrified of women and go through one wild night just to avoid actually confessing their feelings to the objects of their affection. These guys don’t hate women, they’re just frightened and utterly bewildered by them, and so they rely on what pop culture and their peers have taught them is the way to a woman’s heart: booze.
The movie is taken to an extra level of excellence thanks primarily to the outstanding comedic performances by its cast. Cera was a star of brilliant understatement on TV’s Arrested Development, and when it comes to portraying awkwardness, Cera is king. The gangly teen is a textbook example on high school awkwardness; he feels uncomfortable in his own skin. He seems antsy to leave most scenes. His self-effacing smile, wide-eyed gawk, and nattering stutter are spot-on signals of clumsy, confused, and embarrassed teen life. Cera is a master with impeccably punctuated line deliveries. The kid could make any line funny by flawlessly placing a pause in the right place. Arrested Development was a great showcase for Cera’s comedic chops, and now Superbad is a juicy platform for the funniest straight man on the planet (and he’s only 18 years old).
Hill has been a supporting player in previous Apatow productions, but this is his first major role. Hill is the loud, boorish, vulgar, and more outlandish half of the duo. When he gets worked into a frothy rage you can practically feel his indignant teen spittle. What makes Hill special is that, in an instant, he can go from foul-mouthed cretin to a vulnerable buffoon. In the end, when the police bust a party, Seth runs on instinct and his instinct is to save his friend. It’s the versatility of Hill that allows Superbad to channel the sweet, gooey center behind all the sex-obsessed hijinks.
Not all the different elements of Superbad seem to fit together. The cops subplot is played very broad and relies on a lot of physical comedy; it feels at odds with the genuine teen comedy that is the heart and soul of the movie. The subplot is indeed full of laughs and it turns McLovin into a legendary teen character, but it feels like a separate movie, albeit an interesting one. For a male-dominated comedy, the female roles are pretty sparse but even those take heed not to slip into empty stereotypes. Becca and Jules are portrayed as sensible and approachable.
In short, Superbad is super good, and it’s thanks to relatable characters, a sweet sensibility, plenty of raunch, and some excellent performances. Apatow has opened the 2007 summer with a winner and now he closes it with another one.
Nate’s Grade: B+
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