SUPERBAD
Opens Friday areawide

Bad boys Evan (Cera) and Seth (Hill) on the make.

Judd Apatow can seemingly do no wrong. While the writer/producer's forays into television like Freaks And Geeks and Undeclared weren't commercially successful (although the DVD reissues have achieved a cult-like status), his recent string of blockbusters such as The 40 Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up have pretty much given him carte blanche to do whatever the hell he wants. And the more successful he gets, the more freedom he has to green-light projects that balance marketplace appeal with wit, genius and humor so vulgar that it's hard to believe people actually get paid to do this.

Still riding Knocked Up's wave of success, the latest Apatow production is set up to be a blockbuster monster - and for once, it's a film that actually deserves being prepped for this proverbial slam-dunk. We're going to go ahead and call it now: Michael Cera is the funniest actor in Hollywood. Although the 19-year-old Canadian is best-known for playing George Michael Bluth, an incest-obsessed high-schooler on the now-defunct sitcom Arrested Development, in his first feature role he displays a subtle mastery of physical comedy that makes it pretty much impossible to look at his face without completely losing it.

The storyline - which was co-written by Evan Goldberg and Knocked Up star Seth Rogen over the past decade - is nothing especially new; essentially the film centers around best friends Evan (Cera) and Seth (Jonah Hill) who are dead set on having a blast at the final big party of the year before they leave for separate colleges in the fall. Like all Apatow projects, it's raunchy and crude, yet there's a level of sentiment lurking beneath all the sophomoric humor. However, that doesn't mean Apatow, who produced the film, has mellowed out, a fact which is best exemplified in a scene where a drunk party girl played by Undeclared's Carla Gallo has an "accident" while grinding with Seth at a kegger.

Other highlights of the film include a hilarious quasi-love scene between Evan and Seth, which features both inebriated adolescents confessing how much they care for each other during a late-night sleepover; a scene where, in order to avoid getting beat up, Evan has to serenade a group of suburban gangbangers; and, of course, the scene in the trailer where an overzealous Evan projectile vomits all over Seth outside a nightclub.

However, despite all these hijinks, Superbad does an amazing job of taking the viewer back to the awkward stage of adolescence where you're not quite old enough to be an adult, yet still too young to actually do anything fun (the film essentially revolves around the duo trying to illegally buy alcohol to win over the girls they like). While it's a time that none of us would probably actually want to revisit, there's a certain innocence to that era and it'd literally be impossible for anyone over 18 not to able to relate to some aspect of the story. In fact, in a strange way, Superbad miraculously makes you feel nostalgic for a time in our lives that most of us are still trying to forget.

In addition to Hill and Cera, the film also features amazing cameos from Rogen and Saturday Night Live star Bill Hader as clueless cops, and the debut of Christopher Mintz-Plasse, who's already being hailed as the next Sherminator. If you're in the minority of people who didn't enjoy The 40 Year Old Virgin or Knocked Up, you probably won't care for Superbad, either - but if you're looking for a coming-of-age comedy that's hilarious without being pandering, Superbad is exactly what you've been waiting for.