The first time I saw Superbad, I didn't like it. In my mind, Superbad failed to resonate; probably because I was watching it as a balls-to-the-wall comedy like Anchorman. What I failed to recognize was how it reflected my early adulthood back to me in such an empathetic, accurate way.

Looking back now, Superbad seems like a small, fun oddity that had no business being a blockbuster comedy movie with what are now two Oscar-nominated (!) leads in Jonah Hill and Emma Stone (who, it's worth noting, won the Oscar). The main plot, Hill and his costar Michael Cera, playing fictionalized teen versions of screenwriters Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, embark on a quest to get alcohol and kiss their respective crushes, which are presented as herculean tasks. And when you're sixteen, they certainly feel that way. Like The Breakfast Club before it, or the thematically similar UK TV shows Skins and The Inbetweeners, Superbad focuses on those high schoolers for whom things like getting drunk and making out are still just vague concepts, not familiar territory. It represented a break from the early-aughts "teen movie" tone popularized by the sexed-up American Pie series or Eurotrip (which is still good, fight me). It can't be overlooked that Superbad came out at the right time, with millennials (thank God we didn't even know that word back then) proving a little less sexually active than the overall cultural movement that preceded them.

Importantly, Hill and Cera have an easy, kind chemistry. The boom of "bromance," such as it was, probably was the result of 2009's I Love You, Man, a middling comedy about two charismatic men, the band Rush, and a weird, almost fetishist rendering of male friendship that hews nowhere close to reality. Superbad, another comedy movie courtesy of the Apatow production line, is mostly remembered for its "McLovin" character, or maybe for its cameo by a then-unknown Dave Franco. But perhaps the most radical part of the movie, even moreso than the wonderfully gross tandem sex scenes, is the absolute normality with which Superbad treats its central friendship.

No bold line is drawn under two male characters caring for—or, hell, loving—each other. Even now, that's a restraint most movies and TV shows can't accomplish.

Before the ubiquity of "bromance" or "guy love" or whatever you want to call it was even a thing—as if male friendships are at all that pathological or interesting (don't even get me started on "man-crushes")—there were Seth and Evan and Superbad. No bold line is drawn under two male characters caring for—or, hell, loving—each other. Even now, that's a restraint most movies and TV shows can't accomplish. The aforementioned I Love You, Man was a serious offender, treating the very idea of friendship between two men as a comedy premise. Troy and Abed of Community were treated well by their creative team, but were met with equal parts bemusement and horny deification by viewers. Two guys who have the gall to like each other publicly? How cute! And in 2014 (2014!), the Independent ran a piece asking "Are Bert and Ernie a Gay Couple?"

The side story, too, deals in the childish ideals of masculinity, of youth, while still quietly subverting them. Fogell/McLovin (a raw Christopher Mintz-Plasse), only knows how to behave around cops, around men, only in the most basic, movie-fed way. If Seth and Evan are living their version of a teen movie, Fogell is living an action movie. Both hit their beats, but, I'd argue, in ways previously unseen to the genre.

At the risk of overstating, there's nothing in this movie that isn't timeless (except perhaps a scene involving bad cell phone reception and a joke early on about paying for porn). Ten years on, it's still important, and still hits me hard in spite of the fact I find it funnier than I ever did in 2007.

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