| Critic |
Review |
Quote |
Analysis |
This Week's Verdict |
Manohla Dargis,
The New York Times |
Superbad |
"Part of what's fascinating about Mr. Apatow's ascendancy, and why the comedy moment belongs to him more than it does either to the Farrelly brothers or to Ben Stiller and his mob, is how he has created — and come close to perfecting — a masculine variation on aspirational wish-fulfillment movies like Legally Blonde. Except instead of perky, pretty women reaching up, up, up, Mr. Apatow offers freaks and geeks aching to be worthy of those same women.
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It's nice when critics make clever references to a director's or in this case a producer's past efforts. But the "freaks and geeks" turn of phrase in each and every article that mentions Judd Apatow is getting a little tired.
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Scott Foundas,
Village Voice |
Superbad |
"More geek than freak, chubby, motor-mouthed Seth (Jonah Hill) perpetually brings up the rear in gym class and gets spat on by the resident senior-class bully, while gangly, soft-spoken Evan (Michael Cera) — who can run like the wind but doesn't really get the point of things like sports — stands dutifully at his side, an introspective Sancho to his brash Quixote." |
See this weeks criticism of the Dargis review above.
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Eric Kohn,
New York Press |
Superbad |
"The ethnic identity in Superbad is white as a sheet. That shouldn't detract from its merits as an above-average teen sex comedy, but the race factor begs mentioning; unmitigated whiteness dictates the movie's scathing portrayal of high school tomfoolery." |
Because high school tomfoolery must always be Caucasian? Only upon second reading did I realize this review was written by Eric Kohn, not fellow New York Press-er Armond White. Kohn fills White's earnest social-realist shoes well as he clamors for ideological soundness in the very first paragraph of an "above-average teen sex comedy." At least Kohn didn't attempt a pun on "Freaks and Geeks."
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Dana Stevens,
Slate.com |
Superbad |
"Seth convinces Evan to ditch their pal and round up the alcohol some other way. [...] I was never able to forgive Hill's character for that initial betrayal. Isn't it part of the outcast code that you stand by your friends in time of need? Seth is meant to be a lovable nut, and he's given many of the movie's funniest lines, but all too often — especially when he browbeats Evan for getting into a better college than he did — he just comes off as a jackass." |
I don't know what kind of morally superior freaks and geeks outcasts Dana Stevens hung out with back in the day, but wasn't high school (for all of us) at least as much about being ditched for someone more popular at a critical moment as it was about outsider-solidarity? |
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Mary Elizabeth Williams,
Salon.com |
The Invasion |
"The problem with Hirschbiegel's (Das Experiment, Downfall) convoluted, car-crash-laden Invasion is that it doesn't know what symbolism it wants to grasp. Is this mess of a film, which has endured rewrites by the Wachowski brothers and reshoots by director James McTeigue, a dark meditation on our overmedicated culture? A warning about how vulnerable we are to threats from the outside? A coda on what happens when we unquestioningly accept the lies our government doles out? Or just a big exploding pile of nonsense?" |
The latest incarnation of Invasion of the Body Snatchers may well turn out to be nothing but a big exploding pile of crap, but aren't alien-paranoia B flicks frequently built on wobbly mixed metaphors and often best analyzed with a few years of hindsight?
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