Critique the critic

The movie I chose was Superbad because it is one of my favorite movies so I thought it would be interesting to see what critics had to say. I chose to read a review by a woman named Amy Biancolli from the Houston Chronicle. I really wanted to see what a woman had to say about a movie geared toward teen age males with mostly male humor in it. Almost all of what this critic had to say I completely agreed with.

To my surprise “even this middle-age hausfrau can appreciate the zonkered comic force behind Superbad” (Biancolli). This movie was marketed toward teen males and is a story about three high school senior guys attempting to get booze to a party to get their crushes intoxicated so they can finally score before going off to college. I figured not many women would find this movie to be funny because of all the potty humor and sexual jokes but this critic actually enjoyed the movie. Many women who I have talked to could not stand this movie so I was very surprised to see that a middle aged woman enjoyed it and teen age girls did not.

“You can look at Superbad one of two ways. It's either a genius-touched stream-of-conscious- ness odyssey about young men in pursuit of an elusive ideal — something James Joyce might have written after a long night downloading porn — or approximately two hours of penis humor. It all depends on your age, mood, tolerance for five-alarm profanity and, quite possibly, gender.”(Biancolli)

This quote sums up the strong differences between people when talking about this movie. It seems to be a love it or hate it movie. I completely agree with the last part about age, mood, and tolerance for profanity. It seems that teen age males in a good mood that are used to profanity would be the ones to love this movie. But I can also see why people do not like it because of all the profanity and it is a movie about teens that not many adults would go and see. She says quite possibly gender but I think gender is a definite factor in liking or disliking. The dialogue can be described as “a nonstop stream of F-words and S-words and D-words and so on through the alphabet, a blue-mouthed exposition on sex and the teenage boy.”(Biancolli) All the jokes in the movie are male oriented and the movie is all about teen age males and their goals, the females in the movie are just there for the males almost, they don’t have a very in depth character. Girls tend to like girl oriented movies and guys tend to like guy oriented movies.

The one thing that this critic failed to comment on that just about every other critic said that I came across while researching for this journal is the purpose of the movie as a whole. What this movie seems to want to do, and many other critics agreed with, is be a completely hilarious movie that keeps you laughing for most of the movie. This movie kept me laughing for almost the entire time along with the people I saw it with. The story of the movie itself is almost a joke, get booze to a party so they can get with the girls they have had crushes on, and people seem to over analyze this movie for its flaws in plot depth, it seems to just ramble, and for the dialogue containing so much profanity but these are the characteristics that make the movie so funny. It would be very hard to make a movie this funny with the reasons that made it funny, random and unnecessary profanity along with sexual/bathroom humor, have an in depth plot and dialogue.

The critic made very good points concerning who would enjoy this movie and also showed me that teen age males are not the only ones who can enjoy this movie. I agreed with almost everything she had to say besides the gender part. She related this movie to Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, which was a new connection. Most other critics related it to The 40 Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up. It was interesting to see what a middle aged woman had to say about a teen age male comedy.

Biancolli, Amy. "Teens Behaving Badly is Supergood." 17 Aug. 2007. Houston Chronicle. 11 Feb. 2008 http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ent/movies/reviews/5030667.html.
Picture: http://www.worstpreviews.com/images/posters/superbad/superbad2_large.jpg