Superbad

Superbad is the greatest high school comedy since Fast Times at Ridgemont High — a film that captures the desperation, awkwardness, and surprising tenderness of adolescent male friendship with a honesty that no other comedy has matched. Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg wrote the screenplay when they were 13 years old and spent over a decade refining it, and that combination of teenage authenticity and adult craft produces something remarkable.

Jonah Hill and Michael Cera are a perfect comedic duo. Hill's Seth is loud, vulgar, and terrified of being left behind when Evan goes to a different college. Cera's Evan is quiet, anxious, and the emotional core of the film. Their relationship — never explicitly acknowledged but always present — is the real story. Superbad is not about getting laid. It is about the terror of growing up and losing the person who has been your entire world.

Christopher Mintz-Plasse's McLovin is one of the great comedy debuts — a character so perfectly conceived that his fake ID (one name, like Seal) became an instant cultural artifact. Bill Hader and Seth Rogen as the incompetent cops provide a B-plot that is as funny as the main story. The film's R-rated honesty about teenage sexuality — the drawings, the period blood, the drunken confessions — was shocking in 2007 but has aged into something that feels truthful rather than gratuitous.