Films

8.2Skry

Superbad

2007

Two high-school seniors who have structured their entire social identities around each other spend one chaotic night trying to procure alcohol for a party neither of them is sure they actually want. Greg Mottola runs the film as a series of escalating misadventures that keep the two apart more than together, which turns out to be the point: the comedy of embarrassment is also a comedy of codependency quietly running out of road. Christopher Mintz-Plasse and Bill Hader orbit the chaos in roles that became their own kind of cultural shorthand. The register is raucous, but the engine is anxiety about what comes after the friend you've always had stops being the one you need.