Superbad: 2-Disc Unrated Extended Edition (Blu-ray)
Studio: Sony/Columbia Year: 2007 Rated: Not Rated Program Length: 118 minutes Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1 1080p Languages: English Dolby TrueHD 5.1, English PCM 5.1, French Dolby TrueHD 5.1, Spanish 5.1, Portuguese 5.1 Subtitles: English, English SDH, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Korean, Chinese |
The Program
Producer Judd Apatow has become the most prolific producer of side-splitting comedies in recent years. Among his credits are The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, and Knocked Up. Well, get ready to laugh even harder, because now we have the Blu-ray release of Superbad: 2-Disc Unrated Extended Edition, which may be the funniest raunchy high school comedy ever made.
When I say raunchy, I mean it. From the opening scene, Superbad features some of the smuttiest language you are likely to hear, and certainly the smuttiest language to come out of the mouths of characters who are high school students. However, unlike so many films which use obscenities to shock or generate cheap laughs, the dialogue in Superbad works precisely because it genuinely reflects the way many high school students actually speak among themselves. The obscenities flow effortlessly and naturally, so they amuse rather than offend.
Superbad examines approximately 24 hours in the life of two high school senior boys, Seth (Jonah Hill) and Evan (Michael Cera). The two have been best friends since they were eight years old, but now they have just two weeks before graduation and in a few months they will be heading off to different colleges. Evan will be going to Dartmouth, but the Ivy League school rejected Seth and he will be attending a state college. Seth, who confesses to Evan that he obsessively drew penises in his notebooks while in elementary school, desperately wants to find a girlfriend for the summer. Evan, who likewise does not have a girlfriend, is smitten with Becca (Martha MacIsaac) but has not worked up the courage to ask her out. Seth and Evan have only one other real friend, Fogell (Christopher Mintz-Plasse). It is Friday and Fogell has found a source who will sell him a fake ID card, so the boys finally have reasonable prospects of getting alcohol for the weekend.
Just when it appears that graduation is going to come and go without the boys being invited to any parties, fate intervenes. Seth and Evan enrolled in Home Economics, figuring it would be any easy class in which to score an A grade. When the class is assigned to make tiramisu, Seth gets into a hilarious discussion with the teacher (Brooke Dillman) when he complains about not having a partner to work with in class. She then tells Seth to pair up for the day with Jules (Emma Stone), one of the hottest girls in class. In between leers and faux gropes, Seth mentions that he is getting a fake ID. Jules then tells Seth that she is throwing a party that night while her parents are away, and it would be really nice if Seth could attend and bring some booze. Seth is overjoyed, as he envisions a summer of lust in the arms of Jules.
Fogell manages to get his fake ID, though not without complications. The scene where Fogell goes into a liquor store to buy the booze for the party is truly uproarious and his encounter with Mindy, the store’s cashier (Erica Vittina Phillips) is something you will not soon forget. Seth and Evan, who are waiting outside, become dismayed when they see that a police car has arrived at the liquor store. Fogell then goes on an extended and wild ride with the rather unconventional policemen, Officer Slater (Bill Hader) and Officer Michaels (Seth Rogen).
While the story of Superbad is, on one level, merely about high school boys trying to be cool, score liquor and make it with girls, it ultimately is about the friendship between Seth and Evan. While this comedy is funny to the extreme, it is also very touching because the relationship between the two boys rarely hits a false note.
This is the unrated extended edition of Superbad. I did not see it in theaters, but the theatrical release was rated R and ran for 114 minutes. The unrated version has an additional 4 minutes of footage. Screenwriters Seth Rogen (who as noted also plays Officer Michaels) and Evan Goldberg have based the characters of Seth and Evan on themselves, and the film was inspired by memories of their own high school days.
Viewers who are uncomfortable with vulgar language should avoid this like the plague, and it definitely should not be viewed around young children. Those caveats aside, pick this up and settle down for more than two hours of sustained hilarity.
The Video
The 1080p Blu-ray widescreen transfer (AVC MPEG-4 codec) is extremely sharp and colorful. It is highly unlikely that Superbad looked better than this in theaters. Flesh tones are accurate, the colors are stable, and the night scenes display excellent shadow detail. The action takes place in “Clark County” but the exteriors were actually filmed at El Segundo High School and Cal-State Northridge in California, so the scenes at school are very realistic. All in all, this is another superb-looking Blu-ray disc.
The Audio
The viewer has the choice of listening to Superbad either in Dolby Digital TrueHD 5.1 or uncompressed PCM 5.1 surround (there are also several foreign-language 5.1 soundtracks, as noted above). Both of the English soundtracks sounded excellent to my ears, with the PCM soundtrack seeming to be just a bit more pleasing. Dialogue is always clear and the surround channels are used very effectively. There is a lot of music in this film, and it all sounds terrific.
The Supplements
Superbad is packed with special features.
The entire program is spread over two discs. The feature appears on Disc 1, which also contains the following extras:
1.A commentary track with Judd Apatow, Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg, Jonah Hill, Michael Cera, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, and director Greg Mottola. Rogen and Goldberg repeatedly express amazement that the film ever got made, even though it is a project which they have wanted to make for years.
2.Several deleted and extended scenes.
3.A “Gag Reel” of bloopers.
4.“Supermeter,” a feature which can be toggled on and off and which keeps track of the film’s vulgarities and the number of times the word “McLovin” is used (you’ll have to watch the film to fully understand the “McLovin” gag).
5.“Semen Conversation” – there is no way to describe this without giving away one of the film’s raunchiest gags!
6.A scene from the upcoming Judd Apatow film “Pineapple Express.”
7.“Line-o-Rama,” a collection of some of the raunchier dialogue in the film.
8.Trailers for eight other Sony/Columbia releases.
Disc 2 is devoted entirely to extras:
1.A 13-minute “making of” featurette.
2. “Copcar Confessions,” a series of apparently improvised scenes featuring SSeth Rogen and Bill Hader in their roles as the police officers with different aactors playing prisoners in the back seat of the police cruiser. Among the aactors playing the prisoners are Jane Lynch, Craig Robinson and Chris KKattan. With the exception of Rogen and Hader, the “Copcar Confessions” aactors do not appear in Superbad.
3. A 13-minute featurette on the making of the film’s musical soundtrack, featuring Bootsy Collins and his band.
4.“On Set Diaries,” footage shot while filming was underway.
5. “The Vag-tastic Voyage,” a promo for a pornographic web site which Seth is fond of. This feature contains the only nudity in the entire program.
6. “Press Junket Meltdown,” which shows Jonah Hill getting angry with a British television reporter who asks Jonah and Michael Cera some outrageously stupid questions. I presume that this is a gag interview, though the disc doesn’t expressly say so.
7. “Everybody Hates Michael Cera,” a humorous look at Michael Cera’s experiences during filming, with everyone else involved in the film pretending to dislike him.
8. “TV Safe Lines,” alternate dialogue for different versions of the film.
9. “Jonah’s Voicemails to Michael,” audio recordings of voicemail messages which Jonah left for Michael before and after the filming of Superbad.
10. “Snakes on Jonah,” a featurette about attempts to frighten Jonah with snakes, lizards, frogs, etc.
11. “Dancing Title Sequence,” which shows how the opening titles were made with Jonah and Michael dancing in front of green and blue screens.
12. Cast audition footage and table reads – the first draft of the script was read by mostly different actors in 2002. Also included is the 2006 table read with the final cast. One interesting tidbit is that the character of Becca was originally to be named “Helen.”
The Packaging
The two discs come in a standard Blu-ray keepcase inside a cardboard sleeve.
The Final Analysis
I’m not usually a big fan of teen comedies, but this one really hits the mark. Anyone who remembers the awkward teen years will find something to relate to in this film – providing, of course, that you can deal with the language. There are a few mild sexual scenes with fairly graphic language, but no nudity. Sony has given Superbad a first-rate Blu-ray release.
However, there is one annoying feature. Disc 1 is slow to load, and when it does load it defaults to a trailer for the upcoming Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story. While the trailer was playing I could not directly access the main menu, but I eventually figured out that I could get to the menu by pressing the skip ahead button.
Equipment used for this review:
Panasonic DMP-BD10A Blu-ray Player
Sharp LC-42D62U LCD display
Yamaha HTR-5890 THX Surround Receiver
BIC Acoustech speakers
Interconnects: Monster Cable
Release Date: December 4, 2007
