Superbad

As filmic territory goes the coming of age movie has to be among it's most widely traveled. Seemingly every generation robs it's characters, themes, tropes and often full on plot from the previous ones and attempts to stamp something new upon them. And I suppose as each fresh generation finds such a film at a time when they are emotionally placed to find particular relevance, each new wave has it's own purpose. But from a wider perspective, as in one no longer of that age, it can't help but be unfavourably compared to whatever happened to catch me when I was.

Which is probably a shame, as Superbad is I believe a pretty strong example. While it has some of it's own ideas, mostly it deals in the familiar, but covers a lot more ground than usual and does so with a good deal of style and charm. It's a more interesting and indirect "get the girl" story than the typical teenage affair (such as boy meets girl, girl has jock boyfriend, boy enters some sporting event in order to impress girl, boy turns into werewolf, boy humiliates/mauls jock boyfriend and gets girl), and unusually it splits the lead between the typical "good but naive" and "fun but reckless" roles, each with their own oblique romance arc.

Michael Cera is, I believe an acquired taste, but having recently watched my way through the excellent Arrested Development I've become quite a fan of his awkward teen schtick, it's timing is excellent. One wonders how long that will continue to be welcome, but for now it's generally pleasing. Jonah Hill I find slightly disturbing with his glassy eyed stare, but he pinned down the sympathetic asshole role rather well. The films other plot involves the extreme geek and some bizarre cops, which runs out of steam pretty quickly but does have by far the best dialogue and is the most unusual element, almost belonging to a whole other movie.

The problem I found with the whole thing however, is that I didn't find any of it remotely funny. A lot of what I assume were jokes just fell horribly flat, it barely even registered as amusing and left me trying to deal with it as some sort of teenage drama. "Not my cup of tea" seems a particularly poor explanation as for why, but that is seemingly all I have. It kind of works straight, as a decent balance of the new and familiar, covering, as I say, a lot of the ground with aplomb, but I felt it's main thrust just passed me by.