Superbad: Critic Reviews

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.

Horny is as horny does in the sweetly absurd high school comedy Superbad.

It's pretty crass and pretty silly, but only a puritanical grump would deny it's funny.

Humiliation, fear and occasional elation are the dominant emotions for these bumbling but oddly likable young men. Side-splitting laughter, along with some powerful cringing, are likely to be audiences' dominant reactions.

Greg Mottola executes Superbad with his characteristically light touch, even if it's used in the service of filthy sight gags, endless profanity and an inordinate obsession with bodily fluids.

I wanted to find this as funny as audiences did. But it mostly made me understand the case for staying a virgin until you're 40.

This hormonal answer to Reefer Madness is good, wacked-out fun.

What's most memorable, most striking about Superbad is the canny evocation of male friendship in all its richness and complexity.

Even this middle-age hausfrau can appreciate the zonkered comic force behind Superbad, whose rambling plot and profane bull sessions reminded me of Danny Leiner's Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle.

Superbad has raunchy charm, a fair amount of heart and a couple of nice performances.

A critical mass of these kinds of flicks argues for a new subgenre: "nerdsploitation."

Superbad might be the most provocative teen sex comedy ever made; it is certainly one of the most convulsively funny.

The movie succeeds as a teen's wild fantasy of a night in which everything goes wrong, revised by an adult's melancholy sense that nothing was ever meant to go right.

A four-letter raunch-a-rama with a heart.

The comic peaks of Superbad deal in specific characters rather than easily pegged stereotypes. Their most outlandish verbal riffs -- none of which can be quoted -- give the edgiest stuff in Knocked Up a run for its money.

The variety of complications thrown at the three pubescent heroes raises this a cut above most raunchy comedies.

A crazed odyssey of booze, lust, thwarted sex and undying friendship.

Superbad maintains that delicate balance of sweetness, empathy and vulgar comedy. It's so packed with irreverent lowbrow wit that you scarcely notice how it quietly shifts from gross-out jokes to adult themes.

Superbad falls short of teen classic status. What a super-shame.

What is required is a sense of humor. Bring that to the theater with you and you won't be disappointed.

The bawdy jokes score big points, but it's the rueful acknowledgement of adolescent embarrassment and humiliation that most distinguishes Superbad.

Super-vulgar, ridiculously sophomoric, horribly nasty and so hilarious you'll probably squirt Diet Coke out of your nose within the first 20 minutes.

Like Knocked Up, this is a comedy they don't know how to end. The energy flags as it overstays its welcome.

Contains laughs galore, so many that the last one may get in the way of next one coming. But it's also got moments where you may want to cover your eyes to shield yourself from the sheer, wince-inducing familiarity of the behaviour on display.

'Superbad': 'American Graffiti Redux,' only updated with the usual raunch and a major penis fixation