I would never have thought to add this to my list except that whenever people discussed their favorite comedies online, it invariably pops up. Indeed the film’s reputation has grown over time. My initial impression of it were bad. It seemed like the usual story of graduating high school kids wanting to lose their virginity. In the end, I still can’t see the greatness in it. But I concede that the duo of Jonah Hill and Michael Cera works and they manage to soften the raunchiness with the cuteness of the characters so the comedy is never mean-spirited.

Seth and Evan are best friends who are about to graduate from high school. Being nerdish kids, both are virgins who are anxious to have sex for the first time before going off to college. They seemingly get the opportunity when another dorky friend Fogell obtains a fake ID. This allows them to promise their respective love interests, Jules and Becca, that they are able to get alcohol for a party at Jules’ house. Naturally things start going wrong with their plan immediately. Fogell’s fake ID only has the single name McLovin and lists his age as 25, destroying its credibility. After Seth admonishes Fogell for his stupidity, he walks into the store to steal the alcohol but chickens out. When Fogell makes his attempt, it appears to work until a robber runs into the store and knocks him down. Then he gets caught in shenanigans with the two police officers who arrive on the scene and are seemingly cool with him. Meanwhile Seth and Evan believe that Fogell has been arrested. Seth gets hit by a driver who takes them to an adult party as a way to make up for it, promising that there will be alcohol there.

This is part of a very long line of similar American high school comedies. For my generation, the iconic one must be American Pie. With the distance of age, the single-minded obsession with obtaining sex feels ridiculous. Still, we were all that young once and this probably is one of the better depictions. The jokes are crudely sexual and while there is no nudity, the dialogue is plenty graphic. Seth combines both self-awareness with insecurity, Evan is smarter but also more anxious. There’s a running gag of how both of them are dismissive of Fogell but the latter is the one who gets everything at the end. It’s plenty entertaining and the film wants to prove how unafraid it is to show that Seth and Evan love each other in a brotherly manner. For all of their talk about getting girls drunk so that they can have sex with them, neither of them really mean it nor do they do anything truly terrible. So they come across as a cute and lovable duo without any of the meanness that makes so many of these comedies feel terrible in retrospect.

Even so, there are still parts that might not have been meant to be mean at the time, but look awful now. By far the worst are the police officers who claim that they just want to show Fogell that cops can have fun too. Seen in today’s light however, they are power abusing assholes who you should absolutely fear far more than any criminal. Their obsession with alcohol would likely be odd to today’s youth who drink far less. Seth and Evan don’t actually take advantage of the girls but Jules is still far too forgiving of his dumbass antics. Neither of the two girls seem to have much depth either beyond Jules being implausibly patient with Seth and Becca actually really wanting to have sex with Evan.

Anyway this film was very much not as great as I was led to believe but it isn’t awful either. To me the funniest bits are the cringiest and most embarrassing moments such as when Evan is pressured to sing at the adult party. That surely is universal for nearly everyone while growing up. As for the rest, it’s amusing but little of it accord with my own experiences. I’ve realized that I’ve never been a fan of Seth Rogen’s brand of humor and this is very much his show. It is still eye-opening that he obviously considers this the standard for North American high school life.