Superbad

The verdict: Sub-par stoner comedy with a few good gags, and a couple of decent performances. More like super-average.

The rating: 5/10

The Seth Rogen/Judd Apatow axis marches on. After the one-two of The 40-year-old Virgin and Knocked Up, they quickly followed up with what looked like being the sucker punch: Superbad . Written by Rogen this time, with Apatow producing, it unfortunately fails to live up to the promise of the previous two movies.

It's a teen gross-out comedy, with Arrested Development's Michael Cera in one of the leads. Sounds good, right? Well, unfortunately, the ideal audience for Superbad is either under sixteen years old or drunk. If you're neither of these things, I don't think you'll like it.

For a start, there have already been so many other movies with this kind of story, summed up by imagining one nerdy kid saying to another "dude, we totally need to get laid before we finish high school." 'Superbad' follows on from a less than illustrious, but long line of similar gross-out comedies, some of which were funnier.

Cera is likeable as Evan, Jonah Hill less so as the loud-mouthed Seth. The two are on a quest to get beer, and are aided by their mate with the fake i.d., Fogell, played by Christopher Mintz-Plasse. Not a name that you'll remember easily, but while Cera unfortunately only gets a few decent scenes to work with, the Fogell character generates most of the funniest moments in Superbad, f'sho.

The thing is, it's dumb, incoherent, and generally populated with idiots. Now, sometimes this is a starting point for good comedy, but not in this case. It has a few warm moments to counterweight the many many dumb, crass jokes, but not enough plot to make it interesting.

Superbad was a huge hit last year, but didn't come close to living up to the hype for me. Then again, I was sober when I watched it...