Greg Mottola (underrated director) gave us the hijinks of McLovin’ and his gang back in 2007 with “Superbad.”
It was, and still is, one of the best comedies of the last few decades. The film was an uproariously funny high school movie that starred Jonah Hill, Michael Cera, Emma Stone and Seth Rogen.
Referencing his Fabelmans co-star, Rogen tells People in a new interview, “What’s crazy is that Gabe LaBelle is like, 19 years old and his and his friends’ favorite movie is Superbad. So it never changed for some reason. No one’s made a good high school movie since then.”
This caused absolute furor on social media because, yes, it’s hard to believe, there are some people out there who believe “Booksmart” is a great movie. Not really, it was overpraised then and still is now.
I much preferred “The Edge of Seventeen,” “21 Jump Street” and “Ladybird.” Maybe they’re not Superbad-level great, but they’re worthy of installing into this debate that Rogen started.
Maybe Rogan is wrong about there not being any “good” ones since “Superbad,” but it was the last “high-school” movie that really broke through the zeitgeist as it were. There have been many other good or even great ones since then, but none have gotten close to being as culturally zeitgeisty as “Superbad” was.