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Funny bits no doubt, but the highly praised team "that brought you 'The 40-Year-Old Virgin" seems to be producing a slightly lamer product each outing. "Knocked Up" was refreshing in the sense that it wasn't literally smacking the audience across the face and saying "Ha ha! You're a retarded sack of shit and I just took your money!  I took your money and now you have to laugh or everyone in the theater will think you're a tightass!!! You bitch!" like, say, the team that brought you "Happy Gilmore" 11 years ago, but it still didn't quite live up to 'Virgin.'

"Superbad" seems to be getting the same overrated response just because it's a high school flick that only kinda relies on gross-out humor and not completely. The fact is though, the Apatow-Rogen-and-Friends team seems to have a schtick that's going downhill too -- keeping every little improved moment that they think is funny (just think of an improv group of drama students in black tee-shirts laughing at each other's silly faces in their little theater company that they're hanging in after hours just 'cause they "love it so much" and then filming their shit and not editing out anything to make sure no one's feelings get hurt) and making a 2-hour film out of what should've been a 90-minute comedy flick.

Then there's the issue of the redundant-as-hell simile gags, where someone looks at a guy's vest and says "You look like Pinnoccio," then the scene goes on and then ends with another guy saying "Take that off, you look like Aladdin" ). Everyone's constantly commenting on what someone looks or sounds just like, to the point where this stops being a true-to-life comedy about the awkward moments of high school and starts being us watching people who, while talented comedically, seem to think they're the funniest people on Earth.

There's a vibe of "Watch THIS PART, watch THIS PART, this is when I say THIS!," and it gets annoying, much like when you (if you're cursed with actor friends like some of us) go to an actual damn improv group's big show and laugh because it's your friend and you don't want them to feel bad and give up on their dream. That said, it is important to reitterate that this thing is a hundred, no, maybe a thousand times better than most other comedies hitting the screens today, and does deserve to be seen over something as despicable as "I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry."

We're following a tiny group of dorks on a mission to get booze for a party, the goal being that girls will like them and wanna have sex with them if they're the guys who are spiking the punch bowl for everyone. The premise, while maybe simple, is at least plain believable and enough to get us caring, but the movie's length drags it out a tad.

Then there's the issue of the female characters, who may just be the first female teen characters ever since "American Pie" to be even more one-dimensional than, say, "American Pie" female characters. Jonah Hill (the fat kid, whose shirt we've all seen on billboards for months now is supposed to be a gag) goes for a girl who's beautiful and popular, but doesn't drink and likes him because he makes her laugh.

With respect for Seth Rogen, who wrote the character "Seth," that was your high school fantasy girl for your movie identity, friend, not a girl who resembles any high school girl in real life, and it does take us out of the story. While the dickhead popular guys are introduced, the popular girls never talk to them, they're all just waiting for these two dorks the entire time -- and the moral is that you don't need booze to get a hot girl, you just need to be yourself. Ahhem. Disturbing, how this is from the same guys who just released that movie with the moral of how if you don't use a condom on a hot girl, maybe you kids will fall in love and have babies together and then you get to have a hot wife forever.

These dork fantasies aren't gaining any sympathy for "dorks," they're actually making dorks look like the kind of people who fucking deserve to be picked on by everyone else. Thaaaat's nooot riiiiiight. But hey, there are some belly laughs in there, you just have to sit down and wait a while, then repeat. That's at least more than the other "funny" folks seem to be offering today.

(3 bongs)

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