Directed by Greg Mottola

Written by Seth Rogen & Evan Goldberg

Starring: Jonah Hill, Michael Cera, Christopher Mintz-Plasse & Seth Rogen

Running Time: 114 min.

Superbad is one film that sure lives up to its title.

Ostensibly, it’s two high school cohorts (Jonah Hill & Michael Cera) who experience separation anxiety at the thought of going away to college. Once that subplot is discarded, what’s left is a tale as old as time: kids hunt for fake I.D.s to buy booze for a graduation party with guaranteed pussy.

Not again!

A third friend played by Christopher Mintz-Plasse secures a forged Hawaiian driver’s license issued to one “McLovin,” a moniker the film milks for everything it’s worth – and it isn’t worth much. Seth Rogen and Bill Hader co-star as bumbling cops who arrive at the convenience store just as Mintz-Plasse is about to put his new identification card to the test.

Predictably, the officers are not far-removed from the geeks.

Don’t let the film’s tag line (“From the guys who brought you The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up”) fool you. While Judd Apatow, the director of those films, produced, and Seth Rogen, co-writer Evan Goldberg and the endearing Jonah Hill all played a role in Knocked Up, Superbad feels more like baby steps, not a follow-up to a pair of blockbusters.

The distinguishing player in the bunch is director Greg Mottola, who scored an impressive debut with The Daytrippers, a perceptive comedy about a woman and her family spending a day driving through New York in search of her philandering husband. It’s a remarkable film with an ending you won’t see coming. It’s been 10 years since Mottola has scored a theatrical release. The years since he’s spent writing episodic television – and it appears to have taken a toll.

Unless you’re in the mood for dirty words unimaginatively strung together, spitting, vomiting, menstrual blood and dick jokes, Superbad’s ending doesn’t come soon enough.

There are so many dick jokes that one begins to wonder about the boys’ future prospects as a coo-some twosome.

A flashback to grade school shows Hill’s character so obsessed with penises that he draws them on anything he finds. Later, when the guys go clothes shopping together, Hill makes sure to check out Cera’s ass and crotch as he models his new slacks. Following the party the boys end up sleeping together and after some playful nose tweaking, they fall just short of giving each other a goodnight kiss. Separation anxiety my eye!

There are barely enough laughs to justify a five-minute running time, let alone 114 minutes. You’d be better off spending two hours in a gas station lavatory. The shithouse graffiti is bound to reach a higher degree of wit and sophistication.

Rating: BOMB

Directed by Matthew Vaughn

Written by Jane Goldman & Matthew Vaughn

Starring: Charlie Cox, Claire Danes, Michelle Pfeiffer & Robert DeNiro

Running Time: 128 min. in CinemaScope

Sometimes I wonder why I spend lonely nights slogging through slop like Stardust.

This fanciful story about finding a fallen star is so convoluted you’ll need a map to find the exit door when it ends. This is a “make-it-up-as-they-go-along” fantasy film. When backed into a corner, the lazy screenwriters resort to magic as an out. In one scene, they use magic to whip up an imaginary village to quicken the heroine’s escape. If the writing/directing team remade Hitler: The Last Ten Days, they would undoubtedly have provided Adolf with a pair of “ninth-hour” wings to magically fly from the bunker.

The only reason this is being reviewed is Bobby DeNiro. The “greatest actor of his generation” is once again hardly working for his fat paycheck, this time as a gay buccaneer. Rocky and Bullwinkle has never looked better.

Johnny Depp turned heads with his swish swashbuckler Jack Sparrow. Not to be outdone, DeNiro converts his Captain Shakespeare into a full-fledged drag queen. In front of his band of scalawags he’s all macho pirate bluster, but behind closed doors he parades around in bustiers, garters and beauty spots. The man should be ashamed.

It is hard to say what is worse, DeNiro cribbing one of his pupil’s laziest performances or the lack of anything fresh he brings to the role. He prances around, purses his lips, elevates a pinky when sipping tea and keeps at least one wrist limp at all times. Captain Shakespeare is the type of stereotypical Nelly that would raise even Paul Lynde’s eyebrows.

The good news is that in its first week of release, this $65 million garbage cow barely hauled in $9 million. The bad news is the lion’s share of last weekend’s grosses went to Rush Hour 3.

Rating: BOMB

Billed as “part happening, part film installation,” Neil Kendrick’s short film showcase, alt.pictureshows, marks its fifth return to La Jolla’s Museum of Contemporary Art on Thursday, August 23.

The one-night-only event offers more than 20 films that occupy not only the Sherwood Auditorium screen but gallery space as well. Kendricks, the event’s founder, spent the last year gathering the films, which run from 3 to 19 minutes. This year’s lineup promises classic surrealist films, absurd comedies, gritty dramas, Blaxploitation parodies and experimental music videos.

Visitors are encouraged to roam the museum and participate in “physical channel surfing.”

The mini-multiplex kicks off at 7 pm. Admission is free to museum members and $5 for the general public.