Summary
- Superbad brought a fresh take to the raunchy sex comedy genre by infusing it with a deeper coming-of-age narrative about friendship and finding one's place in the world.
- Bottoms has the potential to revitalize the R-rated teen comedy genre with its outrageous and satirical take, featuring a wild premise and untethered comedy that never takes itself too seriously.
- Adventureland serves as a spiritual sequel to Superbad, capturing the essence of young people on the brink of adulthood, navigating through parties, romance, and the uncertainties of the future.
Movies like Superbad took the classic form of a raunchy sex comedy but added something extra to the mix. While there were plenty of sex comedies from the past, many with young characters discovering it for the first time, the old way of making these movies was just to add more raunchy situations for laughs. However, with Superbad, the sex comedy was just a setup for something much more important and deep. This was a coming-of-age story about friendship, saying goodbye to youth, and finding one's place in the world. It was a sex comedy with heart.
Starring Jonah Hill, Michael Cera, and many others, Superbad sees everything bad that could happen, leading to a night that ends up changing both of their lives. When it comes to teen comedies like Superbad, there are plenty of options, from similar sex comedies to more adult-oriented movies with many of the cast members, to movies that just show what happens when it is time to leave high school behind.
The 55 Best Movies Of All Time
Screen Rant breaks down the best movies of all time, from old classics to modern masterpieces across multiple genres of cinema.20 Bottoms (2023)
Two High School Girls Set Up A Fight Club To Hook Up With Cheerleaders
Superbad helped to bring back the R-rated teen comedy in a big way, only for it to eventually fall out of popularity again. However, Bottoms could be the movie to once again revitalize the genre with its outrageous and satirical take. Rachel Sennott and Ayo Edebiri lead the stellar Bottoms cast as two high schoolers who start a fight club to hook up with cheerleaders. The wild premise sets the stage for an untethered comedy that never takes itself too seriously, and goes for broke with its over-the-top gags.
It feels like a winning throwback as well as something totally original. Critics and audiences loved the movie, with the audience at South by Southwest nominating it for the Audience Award and the GLAAD Media Awards awarding it for Outstanding Film - Wide Release. The Independent Spirit wards also nominated it for Best Screenplay and Marshawn Lynch for Breakthrough Performance.
19 Adventureland (2009)
Young Adults Come Of Age While Working At An Amusement Park
In many ways, Adventureland seems like a spiritual sequel to Superbad albeit with a more serious tone. Superbad director Greg Mottola wrote and directed the period comedy while several Superbad actors also appeared, including Bill Hader and Martin Starr. The film takes place in the 1980s and stars Jesse Eisenberg as a young man who takes a job at an amusement park for the summer before college.
The movie captures the fun of young people on the cusp of a new phase in their lives, partying and falling for each other. Eisenberg channels the same nervous and charming comedic energy Michael Cera pulls off so well in Superbad and the movie's supporting cast is stellar with Kristen Stewart and Ryan Reynolds giving great performances. The music was also incredible, with David Bowie, INXS, the New York Dolls, and more playing some great songs from the era.
18 No Hard Feelings (2023)
A Woman Agrees To Help A Guy Lose His Virginity
The idea of young teens trying to get their first sexual experience before college is an idea used in a lot of teen comedies, however, No Hard Feelings takes it in a very unexpected direction. Jennifer Lawrence stars as an aimless and reckless young woman who answers an ad in a paper from parents looking for someone to "date" their socially awkward son. It is a premise that will turn some viewers off, but it makes for a hilarious throwback R-rated comedy with Lawrence fully committing to the wild character.
No Hard Feelings also provides a terrific breakthrough performance from Andrew Barth Feldman. The film is raunchy, and has Lawrence go all in for the story. What results is a movie that picked up several positive reviews from critics and warned Lawrence a Golden Globes nomination for Best Actress in a Motion Picture - Comedy or Musical. Lawrence also won the Comedy Movie Star of the Year Award at the People's Choice Awards.
17 The 40-Year-Old Virgin (2004)
Steve Carell Stars As The Titular Virgin
Superbad is cemented firmly in the Judd Apatow style of comedy that was huge in this era of comedy movies. The 40-Year-Old Virgin was the first movie to kick off this trend while also serving as Apatow's directorial debut. Though the R-rated comedy is set around adults, it also deals with misfits looking to add some excitement to their social lives. Steve Carell stars as a middle-aged man who has never had sex, leading to his co-workers helping him cross that life experience off his list.
The raunchy and hilarious humor makes for non-stop laughs, including the infamous 40-Year-Old Virgin chest-waxing scene. However, Carell's charming performance also gives the movie a lot of heart. This specific movie kick started the genre again and led to movies like Knocked Up, This is 40, Pineapple Express, and even Superbad itself.
16 The Hangover (2009)
The Aftermath Of A Wild Night Of Partying
Amid the increase in R-rated comedies of the later 2000s, The Hangover emerged as one of the highest-grossing R-rated movies of all time. From Todd Phillips, the movie is another hilarious adventure with a group of friends having a wild night out. However, unlike Superbad, a movie that goes along on that drunken journey with the characters, The Hangover deals with the aftermath. The movie centers around three men who wake up after a wild and foggy bachelor party night in Las Vegas and discover the groom is missing.
The mystery adds another exciting element to the movie, earning the film a Golden Globe for Best Comedy. The Hangover was a much bigger mainstream success than Superbad, and it ended up as the highest-grossing R-rated comedy of all time when it was released, breaking the record previously held by Beverly Hills Cop.
15 The Night Before (2015)
Three Friends Start To Grow Apart At Christmas
The Night Before also feels like a spiritual sequel of sorts to Superbad but with a holiday twist. The movie stars Seth Rogen, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and Anthony Mackie as a trio of friends on their annual Christmas Eve night on the town as they seek out a legendary Christmas party. The movie features so many of the same themes as Superbad, with the action following the three close friends throughout one wild night where their friendship is tested.
It also shared the theme of friends growing apart and going in different directions. The difference is that these characters are in a much later stage in their lives at the time of the story, but it is still a look at people who realize that they might need to start looking at their own lives and not remaining connected at the hip to their friends. Of course, it still keeps up the R-rated laughs as well as some yuletide fun, and Seth Rogen provides the connective tissue as an actor in both films.
14 Pineapple Express (2008)
Two Stoners Go On The Run From Corrupt Cops & Hitmen
Seth Rogen has his hands in comedies of all sorts, but most of them include the same type of characters seen in Superbad. In his 2008 comedy Pineapple Express, the friends were grown up, but they were still out-of-place misfits who weren't sure what they were doing in their lives. This was an action-comedy about a drug dealer and one of his clients (Rogen and James Franco) who go on the run from a corrupt police officer and several hitmen after witnessing a murder.
Along with Rogen and other Superbad alums appearing in smaller roles, the movie also maintains the crude humor of Superbad. It also has a script by Judd Apatow, Seth Rogen, and Evan Goldberg. Rogen and Goldberg also wrote Superbad (and named the two lead characters after themselves) and Apatow served as the producer of that movie, explaining why the DNA is so close between the two raunchy comedies.
13 Easy A (2010)
A Teen Taunts Her School With Her Sexuality
Easy A proves that you don't have to be a guy to take the lead in a raunchy sex comedy. What makes Easy A even more interesting is that the lead character accused by classmates of being promiscuous was actually not guilty of anything she was accused of. However, Emma Stone's Olive was so angry at the accusations that she played the role in public to show her classmates something they never expected to see. She began to dress provocatively and paid guys to spread the news of her alleged promiscuity.
The movie was based on The Scarlet Letter, but it pays homage to projects that also influenced Superbad such as Sixteen Candles and Say Anything. This includes scenes pulled out of both of those movies, such as a guy with a boombox replaced by a guy with a small mobile device, and a scene of the two new lovers riding off together on a riding lawnmower. The movie was a financial success and Emma Stone won a Golden Globe for her performance.
12 Knocked Up (2007)
A Slacker Gets A Woman Pregnant After A One-Night Stand
Before Seth Rogen was producing his own movies, he was part of Judd Apatow's world of movies and TV shows. He took the lead in the 2007 comedy Knocked Up, along with ER actress Katherine Heigl. In the film, Rogen plays a slacker who hooks up with someone for a one-night stand, knowing that she is out of his league. However, when she ends up pregnant, the two have to come to terms with what this might mean and whether they can co-exist or not.
It is easy to see Jonah Hill's Seth from Superbad grow up, and eventually end up in a similar situation. It is also fun to see the slacker, lovable loser in Knocked Up turn into the police officer who just wants to help McLovin have a good time in Superbad. It is almost hard to believe that Knocked Up and Superbad came out in the same year, showing that Rogen (as an actor and writer) and Apatow (as a director and producer) were at the top of their game during that era of comedies.
11 Old School (2003)
Three Middle-Aged Friends Start A College Fraternity
Before he created one of the highest-grossing R-rated movie franchises of all time with The Hangover, Todd Phillips directed the buddy comedy movie Old School. This film starred Luke Wilson, Will Ferrell, and Vince Vaughn as three former college buddies suffering from a midlife crisis. They decide to start their own fraternity when Wilson's Mitch moves into a house that was rezoned as part of the university, and soon it becomes the go-to party house on campus.
The movie shares a lot in common with Superbad, especially around the wild party scenes and the unexpected consequences that result. While Superbad has high school students head out to a party for a good time, Old School has middle-aged men deciding to party with college students with similar pratfalls and missteps. It is also fun to see Jeremy Piven play the college authority role when he previously played the rebellious college student role years before in PCU.
10 Good Boys (2019)
Middle-School Kids Encounter Adult Situations
Take the kids from Superbad, make them about five years younger, and then put them in situations that not even the actors were allowed to see in theaters without parental supervision, and that is what Good Boys is all about. Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, the same men who wrote Superbad, produced the movie. Good Boys is about three sixth-grade boys who set out to attend a party with their popular classmates. The boys start to struggle, grow apart, and eventually reconnect.
It is as close to Superbad as a movie can get but with middle school kids discovering adult situations. It is fun to see the young group run into all sorts of problems as they are seniors wanting to party one last time before leaving for college but seeing pre-teens get into similar situations is often uncomfortable, and that brings the laughs in a surprising R-rated comedy. The movie received positive reviews and was a box-office success.
9 Booksmart (2019)
Two High School Friends Break All The Rules Before Graduation
The best part of Superbad isn't all the raunchy and low-brow jokes; it is the sweetness and heart that the movie possesses. For anyone looking for movies like Superbad with a ton of heart, Booksmart, directed by Olivia Wilde, fits that description perfectly. The movie is almost exactly like Superbad in its setup, a re-telling of the classic coming-of-age story, but with two high school girls instead of two high school guys. The main plot sees two high school seniors who have done everything right in school, only to realize they missed out on the fun parts.
They then set out to break as many rules as possible as their senior year comes to an end, ensuring they didn't miss out on anything while playing the role of good girls throughout their high school lives. In the end, that makes this a perfect gender-swapped version of the popular comedy. The film won Best First Feature at the Independent Spirit Awards and remains one of the best young adult movies of the last decade. It also stars Beanie Feldstein, sister of Jonah Hill, as one of the leads, giving it one more connection to Superbad.
8 Blockers (2018)
Parents Set Out To Stop Their Kids From Losing Their Virginity
The entire premise of Superbad is seeing three high school seniors trying to lose their virginity before graduation. Blockers is a movie with a similar storyline but with girls trying to lose their virginity before graduating. What makes it different is that it is from the perspective of the parents trying to stop it. Released in 2018, this is another movie produced by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg and is just a slight twist on the premise, focusing on the parents rather than the partying high school students.
John Cena turns in one of his earliest WWE comedy performances in a movie, joined by Leslie Mann and Ike Barinholtz. While both Mann and Barinholtz are comedy veterans, this was Cena's movie, and he carried it on his broad shoulders. Performances in this movie, as well as smaller ones in Trainwreck and Daddy's Home, helped Cena prove he could do comedy and led to huge roles in Peacemaker for James Gunn and the Prime Video movie, Ricky Stanicky.
7 Dazed And Confused (1993)
The Original High School Party Movie
The Richard Linklater 1993 classic Dazed and Confused is a period piece taking place in the '70s with high school kids preparing for a party on the last day of school. The seniors are on their way out, the freshmen are on their way in, and Matthew McConaughey is the guy who could never leave high school behind. The Dazed and Confused cast is a list of stars of the future, including Ben Affleck, Jason London, Milla Jovovich, Rory Cochrane, and Adam Goldberg.
For fans of Superbad, it is the entire focus of the party for high school kids ready to leave that world behind that makes it a can't-miss coming-of-age tale. The kids here all seem older than those in Superbad, but their attempts at dealing with the last days of school and the oncoming real world match up well between the two movies. Dazed and Confused is still counted among the best high school movies ever made, regardless of genre, over three decades since its release.
6 This Is The End (2013)
Hollywood's Party Kids Face The Apocalypse
For anyone who loves the actors in Superbad, a can't-miss comedy for fans is the 2013 film, This is the End. The great thing about this movie is that the actors all play heightened fictionalized versions of themselves, all attending a party when the world starts to come to an end. Highlights include an obnoxious and arrogant Michael Cera meeting his grizzly demise, an angry and vindictive Danny McBride, and a gloriously over-the-top James Franco.
The cameos alone make this movie worth watching for fans of movies like Superbad. There are so many connections between the two movies. Seth Rogen plays a cop in Superbad and one of the main survivors of the apocalypse in This is the End. Michael Cera is hilariously demented and the joke about Jonah Hill is that he is the nicest guy in Hollywood, although he seems very over-the-top and fake throughout the movie. There are also can't-miss cameos by Rihanna, Emma Watson, and Channing Tatum, among others.
5 Can't Hardly Wait (1998)
Jennifer Love-Hewitt's High School Party Comedy
Released in 1999, Can't Hardly Wait is another high school graduation party movie. It stars a massive cast of the top young stars of that era with Ethan Embry as the main lead, Preston Meyers. He decides that he will finally tell his long-time crush how he feels about her at the party, but things go wrong. The crush is Jennifer Love Hewitt, and the rest of the main cast is filled out by some of the biggest young stars of that generation, including Lauren Ambrose, Seth Green, and a pre-Twiliught Peter Facinelli.
The movie shares a lot in common with Superbad, including trying to impress a girl and figuring out what is really important in life. However, while Superbad focuses on the two friends, with a smaller side-plot with McLovin, Can't Hardy Wait focuses on different groups of people and follows all of them through the party, casting a much wider net, similar to the high school party comedy Dazed and Confused.
4 Wet Hot American Summer (2001)
Camp Counselors Party While Working A Summer Camp
Wet Hot American Summer hit in 2001 with a cast that included many cast members of the MTV sketch comedy series The State. There is also a considerable number of smaller roles for some huge actors that most people know, including Paul Rudd, Christopher Meloni, Molly Shannon, Elizabeth Banks, and Bradley Cooper in his big screen debut. This was a summer camp movie that focused mostly on the camp counselors and their interactions.
This was not about the kids, as Superbad focused on, but they were there at the camp in smaller roles. Instead, this was more about their caretakers ignoring everything about them and choosing to party on their own, making their summer camp job more of a vacation and an excuse to party with each other. The movie was a critical and commercial failure, but it became a cult classic and eventually spawned a prequel series on Netflix 14 years later.
3 10 Things I Hate About You (1999)
A Shakespeare-Influenced Teen Comedy
Over the years, Hollywood has adapted William Shakespeare to the big screen in some unique ways, with many films telling Shakespeare's stories in a very different light. Arguably, one of the best versions of his plays in a movie came in 1999 with 10 Things I Hate About You. This movie is a re-telling of the Shakespeare play The Taming of the Shrew, which itself was a play about a man attempting to court a headstrong and stubborn woman (the Shrew of the title).
10 Things I Hate About You is a high school movie where the new kid in school Cameron (Joseph Gordon Levitt) tries to set up an ill-tempered girl Kat (Julia Stiles) with the high school bad boy Patrick (Heath Ledger) when Kat's dad won't let him date her sister until Kat starts dating too. Much like Superbad, this is a movie about kids trying to find their way into adulthood. The film keeps the dark humor of Shakespeare and delivers some great performances by a cast destined for greatness.
2 Hot Tub Time Machine (2010)
Middle-Aged Friends Have A Chance To Travel Back In Time To Change Their Past
While Superbad is about three high school kids who want to lose their virginity, Hot Tub Time Machine is about three depressed friends who wish they could go back to their high school days when things were much better in their lives. John Cusack, Craig Robinson, and Rob Corddry star in the film. The twist here is that they end up in a hot tub that sends them back in time, and all three have a chance to not only relive their teenage years but make changes to improve their future.
It subverts Superbad, which was about finding the future, by showing three guys reinventing their past. It is also a nice double feature as while one movie features teens who have no idea what the future might hold, and their attempts to make sure to live every day like it was their last, the later movie shows men who realize they never did take that same advice, and now that they have seen what the future held for them, they want nothing to do with it anymore. It makes Seth and Evan's actions look admirable in hindsight.
1 American Pie (1999)
The Most Successful Raunchy Teen Comedy
Superbad has three friends who want to lose their virginity, but American Pie has an entire group of friends trying to navigate the pitfalls of sexuality in their high school years. The movie has five best friends — all virgins save for one (Seann William Scott's Stiffler) — who want to lose it before they graduate. The film was a massive success and featured several American Pie sequels. However, in this case, the main friends are all mostly dating someone, so it is more about couples than a couple of loners trying to find love.
However, just like Superbad, while the main plot might be about losing their virginity in a specified amount of time, it is actually about discovering who they really are and moving into adulthood as fully realized men and women. Both movies are infinitely quotable and both feature a young cast that were all ready to break out into bigger roles once they showed what they could do in their beloved teenage high school comedies.