Exclusive sneak preview!!

The following is the unedited version of my first Ionian column of the semester. The issue hits newstands worldwide (but mostly on Iona's campus) tomorrow...

It was the last, precious Friday before I came back to New Rochelle for the start of the semester, and a couple of my friends from home and I did what we so often do on clear, beautiful, summer nights: we blew $10 each to sit inside and watch a movie.

There I was, comfortably slumped in my heavily-cushioned seat, mindlessly enjoying the hodgepodge of advertisements and Hollywood trivia that come before the previews. Then, one of my buddies, looking around the small, packed theatre, observed that we were quite possibly the oldest people in attendance. I scoped out the crowd myself, nodded in agreement, and quickly returned my attention to the big screen, waiting impatiently for the feature presentation, Superbad, to begin.

As I expected, Superbad was extremely funny, the rare breed of movie that elicited such intense laughter from the audience that, at various points throughout its 114 minute runtime, the film’s dialogue became temporarily inaudible, drowned in a sea of incontrollable guffaws. So I liked Superbad, and I knew that I would. After all, any movie produced by Judd Apatow (of 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up fame) and starring Michael Cera (immortalized in the role of George Michael on the short-lived Fox series Arrested Development) was easily pegged as a can’t-miss sure-thing in my book, going in. But by the time the show ended, the credits started rolling, and the lights brightened, I felt something else on top of that simple, sweet satisfaction of a summer night – and a crisp, clean Alexander Hamilton – well-spent. As much as I don’t want to overstate it, Superbad left me feeling just a little bit queasy, as well.

I only turned 20 years old this past March, so I know that it’s strange for me to say that Superbad left me worried about the impact it might have had on the formative minds of teenagers watching. But it did. And as I walked up the aisle and out the exit of the Dedham Showcase Cinema that night among a flock of high school-aged guys and girls – half of whom undoubtedly had to purchase tickets to the G-rated Mr. Bean’s Holiday, for example, before sneaking into Superbad – I tried and failed to shake that angst that I felt.

What was the source of my angst, you may wonder? Those of you reading along who’ve seen Superbad might be mulling over the possibilities.

Was I shaken by the script’s total saturation with crude language, particularly the constant repetition of a certain four-letter word that begins with an “f” and rhymes with “hockey puck”? No, I’m really not the type of person to get worked up over some cursing – or a truckload of cursing, for that matter.

Did I fail to connect with the movie’s barrage of extreme bathroom jokes and slapstick humor? No, some of my hardest laughs of the night came during Superbad’s most outrageous shock-value moments or during the especially ridiculous physical comedy sequences.

Was I, then, bothered by the fact that the whole story revolved around teenagers angling to have sex by scoring booze for a party fueled by underage binge drinking? No, this basic plotline wasn’t it, either – although alcohol was a part of it.

It should be noted that one of the most often-repeated sentiments praising Judd Apatow’s movies has been an expression of admiration for his ability to create characters who struggle, as Nathan Rabin of the Onion A.V. Club has written, between “the pleasures of eternal adolescence and the relentless pull of adult responsibility,” producing an overall “big-hearted” feeling to his work.

Superbad, for the most part, follows this formula. We watch high school seniors and best friends Seth and Evan – Evan, especially – grow up and mature, ever so slightly, over the course of the film. The aforementioned issues of an all-consuming hormonal sex drive and excessive consumption of alcohol are confronted in the course of this maturation and, therefore, presented with a subtle but important and appropriate level of complexity. Driving drunk, on the other hand, is a virtual constant throughout Superbad, with two sloshed cop characters behind the wheel of a cruiser for the better part of the movie, and this fact simply isn’t approached with any sense of moral complexity or caution at all.

Have you ever seen any national statistics on drunk driving? Of course you have, but I’ll list the big one here, anyways. In 2006, 17,602 persons were killed in alcohol-related accidents. Have you ever nevertheless heard anyone rationalize the legitimacy of driving after having drank? Unfortunately, you probably have. I know I have.

I’m not the type of person who obsesses over the impact of movie content on the youth of America. For example, I won’t divulge here the sort of maneuvers I was tempted to pull driving home in my mom’s Ford Taurus after having seen the Bourne Ultimatum, also this summer – but, plain and simple, I knew better. With a proper upbringing, so would anyone else. Still, we have to acknowledge the desensitizing effect movies can have, and, for a movie that was clearly geared largely towards the high school demographic – regardless of its R-rating – the casual depiction of drunk driving in Superbad was at best an unfortunate oversight, and at worst, reckless.