Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here.
It’s this simple: I think SUPERBAD and KING OF KONG are two of the funniest films in recent memory, and I think it’s an exceptional weekend to go to the movies with both of them opening, depending on where you live. This is a good litmus test for you as a reader and me as a reviewer: I love these movies. Absolutely love them. And your enthusiasm after seeing them is probably a good indicator of how closely our tastes in comedy match.
SUPERBAD is a Great American Teen Comedy. It is not the first Great American Teen Comedy, and I’m not sure it’s the greatest of the Great American Teen Comedies, but it’s certainly guaranteed a place in the echelon. It is a silly script, but it’s deadly smart about being silly. The structure is deceptively simple. There are great character arcs being played out, but quietly, and the film’s first goal is always to make you laugh.
It’s an honest film, and I think that’s what makes it funnier. This is a movie that speaks to real experience. I remember high school nights in Florida when my friends and I would go out with one goal: find alcohol. None of us had older siblings (goddammit!) who could or would buy for us. Occasionally we would convince co-workers at our various jobs to buy for us. Or sometimes, we’d just go out determined that nothing was going to stop us, and we’d try three or four different tacts before something would work. And honestly, I don’t think it was the drinking of the booze that was really important... it was the getting of it. That was the adventure. That’s what accounted for some of the strangest Fridays or Saturdays of my adolescence.
My wife and I were invited to the premiere of the film on Monday night, and when I ran into Seth Rogen, it was at the exact moment that a bunch of his real-life high school friends found him as well.
“Oh my god!” Seth bellowed happily when he saw them. He greeted them and introduced them at the same time, and in doing so, he answered the question of how accurate the movie is to his own experience.
“This is the real Fogell. And this is the real guy who got the period blood on his leg!”
“You must be really proud,” I said to that second guy, and he positively beamed when he said he was. And I wasn’t being sarcastic. Everyone’s personal high school experience feels epic in memory... that’s because you were pumped full of lunatic-levels of teenage hormones and whatever else you could get your hands on, and to see that moment immortalized in a really good movie that was made by your best friends? Amazing.
I hope Greg Mottola gets the credit he deserves on this film. Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg are definitely the architects of the film, and as writer/producers, they brought a lot of creative weight to the table. But I think their sensibilities and Mottola’s make for an excellent mix. Mottola is great with these actors. He coaxes some of the best work yet out of Michael Cera and Jonah Hill, talented guys who sort of explode into movie stars as you watch this film unfold. It’s appropriate that Jonah Hill wears a Richard Pryor shirt at one point in the movie. I think Pryor’s best work was his angriest work, and I think Jonah’s at his most fascinating when he’s angry. He’s blisteringly sarcastic, and that’s certainly funny, but what makes it work is the way his humor really cuts. The anger is real. I think Jonah’s a pretty radical presence in this movie. He’s not doing the Bill Murray/Will Ferrell thing here. He’s a comedy persona we haven’t had for a while, and it’s even funnier when contrasted with the approachably dry but equally funny Michael Cera. Cera’s a stealth weapon, and he knows it. He knows that the more sincere he plays it... the more real and awkward he is... the more the audience feels for him. Neither one of these kids is written as a loser in this film, which is what marks it as something genuine and worthwhile. People can make the case for NAPOLEON DYNAMITE as sort of sneering at its subject, and I think it’s a turn-off sometimes when comedy is about roasting someone from the outside. It’s much more interesting to do what SUPERBAD does by treating these main characters with dignity from frame one. They are geeks. They are certainly not social superstars. But they’re not miserable. What they’re striving for isn’t basic acceptance like in REVENGE OF THE NERDS. They’re just geeks, not outcasts.
Evan (Cera) may be gentle, but he’s not weak, and he shows spine when it matters. He’s the moral compass of the film, especially in his scenes with Becca (Martha MacIsaac), which are uncommonly wise for the genre. Seth (Hill) is a motormouth, and that can work against him when he tells too much truth (I love his scene with the home ec teacher and his “no offense” as he blatantly offends her) or when he makes an unfortunately awkward joke, but it can also be an asset when he channels it in the right way. Done the studio way, this could have been something like TOMMY BOY or BLACK SHEEP, Farley/Spade vehicles that each contain some decent moments or that are inoffensive, but neither one of which I’d really call a good movie. But Evan and Seth are more complicated than a simple Laurel/Hardy riff. And they fill out the world with equally complicated comic supporting characters like Officer Michaels (Seth Rogen) or Officer Slater (Bill Hader), or like Fogell (Christopher Mintz-Plasse), the character destined to be most frequently misquoted and poorly imitated in offices across America. Mintz-Plasse is a real kid, not a polished actor, but he holds his own every second he shares the screen with Hader and Rogen. They sort of have their own movie with the movie, and I especially love the way their story resolves. This is the biggest role Hader’s had in a film so far, and he is excellent. He and Rogen have chemistry to spare, and I hope they’re teamed again soon.
You’ll hear a lot made of how the movies Judd Apatow and Shauna Robertson produce right now are all about “improv,” but I think that’s sort of overstating things. I think they trust the people they cast, and they certainly give people room to play... but the final cut of SUPERBAD is pretty damn close to what I read before they shot the film last year. A lot of the dialogue is word-for-word intact. This isn’t some happy accident. This script by Goldberg and Rogen isn’t just funny; it’s specific, and it’s rich. This is really solid comedy writing first, before anybody improvs a damn thing. What impresses me is how each character has their own comic voice. This isn’t like the John Hughes movies or the Kevin Smith movies where you can hear the one author’s comic voice coming out of every character... and those films are fine, so don’t attack me if you’re a Hughes or a Smith fan... it’s just that instead, each character in this film has a totally different voice, and it just makes them seem like real people.
I respect the casting of Mintz-Plasse and MacIsaac and Emma Stone. They’re kids. They all look like high school kids. Michael Cera’s a kid. Mottola’s film is ultimately about the sophistication of the modern teen, and how much of that is projected onto them, and how much of it is appropriate, and how it really feels right now, trying to navigate the waters of teenage sex. These kids make good choices, even if it takes them a while to get there, and the movie rewards them in small, sweet ways. And considering how infatuated with the idea of sex the entire film is, there’s really only one person in the film who technically has sex, and it’s really only for one shot. One very, very, very, very funny shot... but just one shot.
SUPERBAD certainly wrings quite a bit of its comedy out of the uncomfortable, and I’m a big fan of this kind of comedy overall. Done right, it’s THE LARRY SANDERS SHOW or it’s the British OFFICE or EXTRAS, or it’s Larry David and CURB, and done right, it’s so much dark, wicked, ugly fun. I love comedy that takes it so far into the uncomfortable that I want to press pause as I’m watching, so I can catch my breath. I don’t pause it. I don’t let myself off the hook. That’s the kick, isn’t it? When you see something you really feel like you shouldn’t see? Something so revealing that it’s almost embarrassing. Can you imagine that in one weekend, you’ll get an example of this type of comedy that’s as good as SUPERBAD, but you will also get another film that’s perhaps even more uncomfortable and, maybe, even just a little bit funnier than SUPERBAD? Sounds crazy, but that’s this weekend.
Because THE KING OF KONG: A FISTFUL OF QUARTERS is an amazing documentary that delivers in ways that no fiction film has pulled off all year. Billy Mitchell. Steve Sanders. Walter Day. Steve Weibe. Brian Kuh. This cast of people all explode off the screen, some of the best-realized characters in any movie playing at the moment.
And before I continue... I am aware of the continuing story of this film that exists off-screen, in which various people in the film complain about what they feel is fair or unfair about the movie, and I look forward to seeing any follow-ups, and also CHASING GHOSTS, a documentary that features many of the same people. But for now, all I can judge is the evidence of the film, and THE KING OF KONG is a great movie. A crowd-pleaser. This is a film to see with a lot of people, with your rowdiest friends.
Basically, this is a fairly common type of documentary. Pick people who share an interest. Shoot them indulging in whatever their interest is. Make a film about the interest and about the community around it. Whatever drama suggests itself, that’s your film. It’s not really a reinvention of the wheel.
But Seth Gordon walked into a great story that was playing out, and he shot what he was allowed to shoot. Billy Mitchell complains about the way he’s portrayed in the film, but he was also pretty cautious about allowing Gordon access to his family or his personal life. And certainly, he was under no obligation to let Gordon shoot anything. But as a result of his limited participation, the movie ends up telling Steve Wiebe’s story, and if a movie has a hero, it has to have a villain. This is the story from the perspective of the middle school teacher who just wants to set a high score as a way of proving to himself that he can do what he sets out to do. There’s a cut in this film that is so canny on the part of the director, a juxtaposition of something Billy says and the introduction of Steve... everything you need to know about how Gordon sees this story he’s telling, you can learn from that one cut.
I know they’re working to remake this as a real-movie-with-movie-stars, but I think that’s a pretty big mistake. I don’t care who they cast... they’re not going to be able to play characters this rich, this strange, or this complete. All the film can do is expand on the one-upsmanship that still continues between Mitchell and Weibe, and frankly, I’d rather see another documentary about these guys than watch someone pretend to be them.
Frankly, part of what works for me about SUPERBAD is the aesthetic of it. Russ Alsobrook shot the film with the Panavision Genesis, something that may have helped encourage the loose energy of the scenes, and I admire the way the film makes its San Fernando Valley shitty style into something almost gritty. Huge kudos also have to go to Lyle Workman for his score. He picks some great funk to play on the soundtrack, but he also wrote a ton of great cues for the film that feel right... white man’s funk on an epic scale. It’s one of the best soundtrack CDs this summer as far as my car stereo is concerned.
KING OF KONG is also enjoyably low-tech in terms of look. Gordon’s a smart filmmaker, and he makes the most of what he has, visually speaking. His real gift is putting you into the middle of a scene so that you really are feeling what Steve Weibe is feeling at times. Anyone complaining about this one’s “accuracy” is missing the point; this is an exercise in empathy, and it’s astutely observed on Gordon’s part. It makes me hope that he does justice to Allan Loeb’s lovely script THE ONLY LIVING BOY IN NEW YORK, which Gordon’s supposed to direct next year. I think he’s got real skills as a director, and he sculpts a crystal-clear narrative out of what he shot on KING OF KONG. I’m excited to see Gordon take that step. I just hope he’s smart enough not to remake this story after he’s already told it so definitively.
SUPERBAD’s playing pretty much everywhere. THE KING OF KONG is a limited release for the moment. Hopefully it’ll do well and open wider, because both of these are movies that should be seen in the theater with as much of a crowd as possible.
I’ll be back later today with my review of another big title opening today, the Nicole Kidman/Daniel Craig vehicle, THE INVASION.
Drew McWeeny, Los Angeles
Drew McWeeny, Los Angeles
