There’s that famous scene in The Godfather when Michael Corleone orchestrates a hit on the heads of New York’s five mafia families.
The same thing just happened in Hollywood. As of now, Jim Carrey, Ben Stiller, Adam Sandler, Will Ferrell and Vince Vaughn are dead. There’s a new king of comedy in town.
Step forward Judd Apatow, and hell, take a bow Evan Goldberg and Seth Rogen. In a little over two years the team responsible for The 40 Year Old Virgin, Knocked Up and now Superbad have dragged the genre away from the bloated budgets of yesterday’s in-crowd and given it back to the people, ordinary people, who drink, smoke, swear, take drugs and talk shit about sex.
It’s not rocket science and it’s not art, but it is a breath of fresh air to see normal kids on screen again. Witness best friends Seth (Jonah Hill) and Evan (Michael Cera). Seth is an overweight bundle of sexual frustration, Evan is a timid geek. It’s the end of their school days, they can’t admit they’re terrified of losing each other but, for the time being, they’re preoccupied with getting laid. That’s going to take them on one last, insane night out to score booze, get to a house party and get some action.
That set-up evolves into an explosively funny ride that riffs on everything from Dazed and Confused to American Pie to Martin Scorsese’s After Hours. It’s a sprawling, skittish narrative, but director Greg Mottola marshals it expertly, dividing the screen time intelligently and pacing the big, big laughs against the moments of droll, gentle fun.
Best of all, Rogen and Goldberg’s script doesn’t patronise these kids. Seth and Evan (and yeah, the clue is in the names) aren’t loveable losers, they’re just loveable and – crucially – they’re never forced to become the cool crowd before they get the girls.
Perhaps the film is episodic to a fault. If anything, it lacks the sustained focus that made Dazed and Confused such a melancholy statement about the end of youth. But when a film is so generous, so abundantly un-cynical and such determinedly unwholesome fun, it really doesn’t matter. The future of comedy looks very, very bright indeed.
