Wonderful Fast Times?

I just finished watching Superbad, which I'd missed in the theatres. My nephew's dad, who has the DVD, loaned it to me. He didn't say this, but I think it was a way of thanking me for doing things with his kid.

The movie's nuts. Not the absolute hilarity fest I'd been led to expect by the reviews, but funny, and also a little smarter than you think it's going to be.

That I didn't find it as superb as many have is, I think, more down to me than to many flaws in the movie itself. In the first place, even though I am a guy, the funnier "high school" movies to me tend to be the ones that focus at least as much on the girls' experience.

Think Fast Times at Ridgemont High
or Some Kind of Wonderful.

Although Fast Times certainly can be accused of objectifying women, it also treats some of them (at least) as interesting characters in their own right.

In Superbad, though it seems apparent the writers tried to give their female characters some authentic texture, their comfort zone was clearly more with the boy horny teenage geeks.

Martha MacIsaac (left) and especially Emma Stone (below, in my favorite color), as the objects of the boys' throbbing biological urges, transcend the sparseness of their parts, but the script doesn't give them much to build on.



Single-named actress Aviva (above) has even less to do and does less with it. Her role exists primarily as a celebration of her ass.

In the second place, you might say my problem is generational. For me, the coming-of-age film well, "came of age," with Revenge of the Nerds.

This woman has nothing much to do with anything, but dang, she's pretty.

But then, my nephew's dad is older than I am, and he thinks Superbad is one of the great comedies of last year...