Kevin Smith and Netflix Have the Newest Entries in the ‘Superbad’ Knockoff Sweepstakes

The Judd Apatow era of studio comedies may be well and done with – the man just signed on to direct a movie about the cola wars, for God’s sake, an admission of defeat if there ever was one! – but his influence is still detectable in certain types of comedies, even if they now skew towards indies or streaming. Yet as belated-coming-of-age narratives of The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Bridesmaids continue to inspire more movies, sometimes quite good ones, one of the biggest hits of the Apatow era hasn’t gotten quite so lucky. Yes, plenty of movies have tried to imitate Superbad (which Apatow produced, from a Seth Rogen/Evan Goldberg screenplay and under Greg Mottola direction). But the hit rate has been virtually nonexistent, and that extends to two recent teen comedies.

To some degree, it might not be fair to describe Kevin Smith’s The 4:30 Movie or Netflix’s Incoming as Superbad-inspired. After all, Superbad itself takes a deeply familiar one-crazy-night structure, a practically ancient guys-trying-to-get-laid narrative, and a loud guy/quiet guy buddy dynamic that goes back at least as far as the talkies. Incoming clearly also has eyes on Can’t Hardly Wait and American Pie. Smith’s movie, set during the filmmaker’s mid-1980s youth, is taking inspiration from some of that era’s teen comedies, which Superbad also resembles. The latter was very much greeted as a welcome throwback back in 2007, less immediately “now” than its fellow Apatow/Rogen collaboration Knocked Up, from the same summer.  

But in the nearly two decades since then, Superbad (which has been a fixture on the Hulu streaming charts lately) has come to seem more like its own thing. Though it’s one of many comedies sometimes deemed problematic because of the language and attitudes expressed by its callow-youth characters, particularly Jonah Hill’s Seth – Rogen himself, the co-writer, inspiration for the character, and co-star of the movie in a different role, has admitted that some of that material clearly hasn’t aged well – the movie does actually display a lot more nuance and sensitivity than cruder “classics” in the gotta-get-laid genre. For that matter, it’s more respectful of its young women than a lot of John Hughes movies with actual female protagonists, where rival or bit-player girls are often thrown under the bus. What really roots Superbad in 2007, though, is its tender portrait of male friendship – of two teenager boys with a deep sense of love and attachment that will inevitably be changed by their impending graduation and transition into separate colleges.

“Bromance” quickly became a cliché during the Apatow-dominated years, as some filmmakers were unduly fascinated by the novelty of non-reprehensible male characters in broad, sex-related comedies. Certainly there are plenty of comedies that utilize the buddies-as-tacit-partners idea less gracefully than Superbad. Almost all of them, in fact, because there are few teen comedies (and even fewer this laugh-out-loud funny) that acknowledge the quasi-romantic codependence of formative friendships without turning it into a vaguely homophobic joke. A loud guy (Hill) and a meek guy (Michael Cera) bouncing off of each other is a reliable comic formula, but the richness of Seth and Evan’s genuine feelings for one another adds another layer of yearning beyond their romantic crushes. It even justifies, in its way, the nastier language from Hill’s character, because it positions the movie as right on the cusp of traditional, potentially toxic masculinity falling away and revealing something more sensitive.

That’s where Smith’s The 4:30 Movie falls the shortest and the hardest when measured against Superbad – and it hurts more, because it seems poised to carry on that tradition in a way that Netflix’s Incoming – half gross-out ripoff, half after-school special about being yourself – never approaches, despite Incoming being the more blatant imitation. 4:30 Movie is ostensibly about young movie geek Brian (Austin Zajur) working up the courage to ask Melody (Siena Agudong) out to a movie and maybe become her boyfriend, while spending the hours leading up to the date scheming with his buddies Burny (Nicholas Cirillo) and Belly (Reed Northup) about how to sneak into the R-rated movie they all want to see together. It’s a one-crazy-night story transposed onto an afternoon, and appropriately geeky that a movie theater subs in for a debauched house party.

For a little while, it feels like Smith, who has spent much of the past decade making sweet-natured, well-intentioned, and largely terrible movies, might have made a partial recovery by working in this teenage milieu for the first time. His reference-heavy dialogue, even some of his bad jokes, make sense coming from insecure high school juniors, and the low-stakes antics in and around the local movie theater recall Mallrats (which was basically a teen movie about people who were old enough to know better). There’s even a fun left-field Grindhouse element, with cameo-packed fake trailers that the friends see while theater-hopping at the multiplex.

But then, after gradually losing steam for a while, the movie attempts its Superbad moment: A big scene where the three close friends have an emotional confrontation over their disagreements and insecurities. As in Superbad, the more sex-minded pal (Burny) resents the protests of the quasi-romantic one (Brian); in Smith’s version, the third guy (Belly, the default McLovin) then has to monologue about what the friends mean to each other and why they’re really mad. Besides being simultaneously overwritten (in classic Kevin Smith fashion) and underwritten (in more recent Kevin Smith fashion), the scene doesn’t land because the actors haven’t been given the room to truly inhabit these boys. They’re stuck doing Smith Shtick, revolving around the obvious autobiography of Brian as a Smith stand-in (the not-exactly-jacked Jersey boy who loves movies). Tellingly, the cutest scenes in Superbad are largely between Seth and Evan (and that’s saying something, given that one of their love interests is played by Emma Stone). The cutest scenes in The 4:30 Movie are squarely between Brian and Melody – and these moments are often charming, but also feature the girl telling the nerdy guy how nice and cool and knowledgeable he is.

Smith has shown a great ear for male insecurity; it’s all over Chasing Amy, and even the slacker bravado of Mallrats can feel more like a spoof of ’80s triumphalism than a genuine glorification. But The 4:30 Movie doesn’t make music of it; the movie instead gets starry-eyed about the idea that Brian might one day grow up to make Clerks or its equivalent. (There’s an appalling mid-credits scene that opts out of making these characters their own people.) It’s too bad, because the tactile differences between 1986 and today make for instant nostalgia-glow, even if you’re not old enough to actually remember the lack of cell phones, the lines to buy movie tickets, the lack of assigned seating that can aid theater-hopping. Superbad, too, has some of this; it was a nominally contemporary movie in 2007, yet the lack of smartphones or rideshare apps or any number of innovations just around the corner that could solve the characters’ logistical problems now lends it an accidental time-capsule quality, expanding on its ’70s-funk soundtrack.

The 4:30 Movie, by contrast, mixes wonderful homage (the R-rated movie in question is clearly modeled on Fletch) with dumb, self-conscious jokes about How Things Were and No Longer Are (no Batman movies, Bill Cosby considered a hero, post-credits scenes a pipe dream), while Incoming makes only halfhearted use of social media and a not-actually-an-Uber ride. At some point, maybe someone will make a version of Superbad that better reflects the 2020s, or another era entirely. (This year’s Snack Shack comes a little closer, though it’s more of a summer-vacation comedy than a one-crazy-night comedy.) Then again, maybe the greatest proof of the 2007’s classic status is how difficult that’s proving to be.

Jesse Hassenger (@rockmarooned) is a writer living in Brooklyn. He’s a regular contributor to The A.V. Club, Polygon, and The Week, among others. He podcasts at www.sportsalcohol.com, too.