I agree. Modern comedies rely waay too heavily on raunch for cheap laughs. It's depressing.
Superbad goes the raunchy route, but offsets the avalanche of dick jokes with some genuine hilarity. Michael Cera, who is going to keep playing George Michael until the end of his career, is great... if you liked Arrested Development. Some people don't get it. Their loss.
Jonah Hill is unimpressive... he's just a one dimensional, foul-mouthed fat kid and the dick drawings were lame. He suffers from dialogue overloaded with crude language and vulgarity just for the sake of vulgarity. Obviously, the bravado is part of his "overcompensating virgin" persona, but it falls flat in my opinion. Many critics are calling the ultra-dork Fogell an absolute scene stealer - and he is, to an extent, but he's also playing a one note tune throughout so hopefully you find repetition funny (most people obviously do). The cops are overplayed and feature too prominently, but they also provide some very funny moments.
Much of the writing is genuinely very clever, and the lines (when delivered right) will have you busting up. It drags in parts and relies too heavily on raunchy humor to appeal to the lowest common denominator but nevertheless, Superbad is better than most of the comedies of the last 7 years... which is a depressing indictment of the genre.
More than anything, this movie made me wish Arrested Development was still on the air and I'm now leaning toward the opinion that comedy is best handled on the small screen, though I'm not sure why that is. Perhaps movie stars just suck at it.
