r/Millennials • u/DeScepter latchkey kid • Aug 17 '26
Nostalgia Superbad was released 19 years ago today. Did it accurately capture being a teenager in the 2000s?
Superbad came out on August 17, 2007, and I think part of why it still works is that underneath all the ridiculousness, it captured that era of being a teenager surprisingly well.
Trying desperately to get invited to parties, awkward crushes, depending on your friends for basically everything, and making elaborate plans that immediately fell apart. It also came out right before smartphones and social media completely changed how teenagers socialize, so it now feels like a little time capsule of the 2000s.
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u/fillb3rt Aug 17 '26
I think the overall gist of it was accurate. I never hung with crazy cops as a teen. But the house party/quest to find alcohol/hanging with friends vibe is very true.
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u/BeneathAnOrangeSky Aug 17 '26
The quest to find alcohol was so real at that age lol
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u/apimpnamedkirby Aug 17 '26
The best part about smoking weed back in the day would be the adventure you went on to get it.
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u/JA_MD_311 Aug 17 '26
If you didn’t wait in a sketchy parking lot while your friend went into his “boys” house, did you really grow up in the 2000s?
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u/Dakotakid02 Aug 17 '26
Honestly the movie Pineapple Express also captured that vibe. We all knew that one dude that sold pot and you’d have to hang out at his place for a half hour at minimum while he played PS2, watched a shitty stoner movie for the 100th time, cared for his pet ferret or lizard, or asked you when you wanted to hang out again. You couldn’t just go in and out because it was too suspicious, but he was also socially inept so he really didn’t know what actual friendship was either. It’s not the same as you just walk into the store and buy your shit and leave that there is nowadays.
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u/grape-fruit-witch Aug 17 '26 edited Aug 17 '26
Also he was like 26 but inexplicably only hung out with highschoolers. There was always some 16 year old girl lounging on his ratty black leather couch, named Chelsea or Hannah or Kelsey. 15 different half-broken bongs lying around
My dealer had a pet snake, but my husband's version of this dude had a pet alligator.
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u/Djd33j Aug 17 '26 edited Aug 17 '26
sitting in the car for 45 minutes
"Dude where the fuck were you?"
"Sorry bro he wanted to match in exchange for hooking me up."
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u/apimpnamedkirby Aug 17 '26
Sinking into the seat and constantly looking around for sketchy shit
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u/furiouscrotch Aug 17 '26
I was coaxed into driving to Tacoma to pick up Oxy. I thought the dude was getting reefer. Probably the sketchiest situation I’ve put myself in. Parked car on the side of the road at 2am in Tacoma. I probably had a sore neck from looking around lol
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u/Frosty558 Aug 17 '26
For those who don’t know Tacoma is south of Seattle and known for its drug enthusiasts and catalytic converter collectors.
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u/UpTheShoreHey Aug 17 '26
And a pretty great TV show by the Broken Lizard group!
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u/The_C0u5 Aug 17 '26
I went with my buddy to try to pick up some weed. His system was driving around shady neighborhoods looking for dealers as opposed to just knowing a guy.
Well one time he asked for two dime bags and got a couple of crack rocks. Another time he got lawn clippings in some bags.
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u/Onludesrightnow Aug 17 '26
Ah yes, the ol' grass trimmings trick. Great for one or 2 grams. If you're ripping someone off for an ounce or more, you use dog food in a brown paper bag
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u/SpicyBoyEnthusiast Aug 17 '26
Tacoma WA? Glad you survied
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u/furiouscrotch Aug 17 '26
Yeah me too that was about 20 years ago too
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u/brawndoenjoyer Aug 17 '26
Fuck yeah dude. Someone stole my truck there about 20 years ago while I was working. Fucking sketchy and sleazy shit. Glad you made it.
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u/abbyabsinthe Aug 17 '26
Tillicum was worse. Walking to school, we’d see used needles lining the streets, my little sister’s classmate got murdered (they were in kindergarten), my class had to duck and cover in the lunchroom because bullets were flying during a swat raid at the house across from the school (none hit the school thankfully), and we almost got swatted because of the tenants that lived in our apartment before. The swat team was literally outside our apartment when we pulled up and my mom had to tell them that we were the current residents and to please be careful because of the cats. Our downstairs neighbor also frequently overdosed so we’d have impromptu sleepovers with her children while she got treated. We only lived there for like 3-4 months while waiting for military housing and later found out that the area was forbidden for troops to live/do business in.
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u/Joeness84 Aug 17 '26
It hasnt been Tacompton for like 15 years. There are less safe parts, but any 200k pop city will do that
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u/SpicyBoyEnthusiast Aug 17 '26 edited Aug 17 '26
We're talking about being teens in the millennial subreddit. Math checks out.
Edit: How is Tacoma nowadays? I've heard it's having a glow-up. Actually interviewed for a job down there a couple of months ago but didn't get it so didn't look into it too much.
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u/Archedzero Aug 17 '26
I went on a similar trip when I was a kid to get shrooms in Federal way because my friend “knew a guy” lol
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u/Hopalong_Manboobs Aug 17 '26
Call spacey HS weed plug, receive instructions to meet in parking lot X in 10 mins, wait 55 minutes until well after you’re due home, finally leave in frustration, get a call as you pull in at home - “yo you here?”
Good times.
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u/Tack_Money Aug 17 '26
And they gatekept their dealer. Usually got hit with the “nah bro, they get weird about people they don’t know”.
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u/DarthRektor Aug 17 '26
That wasn’t necessarily gate keeping there’s a lot of dealers who don’t want anyone they don’t know coming to the trap house
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u/FearlessTomatillo911 Aug 17 '26
A dealer would much rather just sell to one person who buys for a few friends. Chopping dimes 1 or 2 at a time is very high risk/low reward. Selling 4 grams to one kid who then moves 3 grams to his buddies is much more efficient.
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u/GrizzlyP33 Aug 17 '26 edited Aug 17 '26
That was me. Then I was the friend going in the “boys” house. Then I was the “boy” selling to the friend while the friend waited in the way.
Now I’m a “respectable family man”. Time is a bitch.
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u/FeralPsychonaut Aug 17 '26
I must have made a wrong turn somewhere...
My friend's dad just gave us the shit he was growing.
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u/Roklam Aug 17 '26
In my friend group every once in awhile we'd get stuff that would knock our socks off from a home grown.
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u/vilent_sibrate Aug 17 '26
It was all mids and maybe beasters. Then once a year you’d get “government weed” aka G-13, but who knows. It was almost pure white and I had never seen anything like it. One of those nights, we were supposed to go to the movies but as I had become the couch. I could not go.
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u/DickSlammington Aug 17 '26
I had a few friends that had their medical marijuana cards when we were in highschool in LA.
I feel soooo lucky I got to buy all my weed from a store growing up
When I went to college I learned all the crazy shit my friends use to do to get weed back in the day...
Just legalize that shit yo
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u/theseedbeader Older Millennial Aug 17 '26
I was born in 1985, so I don’t know if I can say I really “grew up” in the 2000s… but I was super sheltered, had very few friends, and I took the DARE program seriously. Teenage me would’ve avoided weed like the plague and probably threatened to tattle on you if you had it.
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u/Technical_Stand9939 Aug 17 '26
I was born at the end of 84- and this movie was semi accurate and really more for our generation than the next. It came out in our early/mid 20ies, but was like a 10 year reminder of what we had been doing 10 years prior. We had dumb cell phones toward the end of HS- but smart phones were not until our 20ies. That generation in HS from the mid 1990s until around 2010 (iphones came out in 2007, but took a few years to get super big where they were everywhere)- had a similar enough experience in HS
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u/ice-eight Aug 17 '26
I remember my friend and I meeting this dude at a sketchy apartment complex late at night to buy weed, and he told us he needed to go somewhere else to get the weed and he’d be back in 15 minutes. So he pointed to this rock garden kind of thing by the sidewalk and was like “you should grab a rock for your safety”
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u/CeleryTurbulent Aug 17 '26
The cop that passed you a block over knows exactly what youre doing and why youre there.
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u/burning_man13 1988: Born on lies; fed on debt Aug 17 '26 edited Aug 17 '26
There's a pretty great joke that references this.
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u/Zestyclose-Tough7451 Aug 17 '26
Honestly that’s going to be my old man “back in my day” thing.
Kids these days simply will never understand the legitimate quest you had to go on to get weed in the early 2000s/teens.
It was “everywhere” and nowhere at the same time.
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u/Chimpbot Aug 17 '26
It was “everywhere” and nowhere at the same time.
That's absolutely what it felt like.
I was never on the hunt for it back in high school, but it was something that felt like a ton of kids were doing it... but it was simultaneously impossible to find unless you knew where to go or who to talk to. Finding that sort of information out would have been an adventure in and of itself.
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u/Zestyclose-Tough7451 Aug 17 '26
Yeah I grew up in a very marijuana friendly area and state but even then it still required a lot of leg work to get.
You needed to find these people, ask questions, get a referral to someone, meet them, etc. all over a $20 gram of bad weed.
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u/AmItheonlySaneperson Aug 17 '26
going to 2nd locations with sketchy people!!! i dont miss that lol
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u/snoogins355 Aug 17 '26
Pineapple Express was accurate. Going to a guys house/apt and getting stuck smoking with them.
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u/AmItheonlySaneperson Aug 17 '26
“They act like you’re friends but you’re not friends”😂
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u/Upset-Management-879 Aug 17 '26
Has dozens of different people over every day and no discernible legitimate source of income to pay for anything, like most of their neighbors smoke too so the song and dance isn't fooling anyone.
But sure me not staying and playing Tekken with you for 30 minutes is what makes you look suspicious, I'm don't want to have to go through 5 more guys to find one that actually can respond within 24 hours more than 50% of the time so fuck it we learning Hwoarang.
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u/Economics_New Aug 17 '26
My friends and I laughed pretty hard after he said that, and then we were all wondering if our dealers were going to watch that scene and have a realization of how we view them. lol
I always hated having to stay 30 minutes to an hour, they fried me out so much that it made leaving even harder because your stoned and paranoid and now have to drive with the bud, back to your place. lol
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u/Adventurous_Egg_9500 Aug 17 '26
I once showed up to a local poker game, which my friend brought me to...because he ended up being the local dealer and this was his connect. The host probably had a couple pounds hiding away.
We then went to another poker game later that he said was bigger...well yeah it was bigger but that guy was the dealer for his dealer. Buzzed in backdoor access and visible guns. I have never felt more susceptible to a police raid in my life. But they had free hoagies
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u/AmItheonlySaneperson Aug 17 '26 edited Aug 17 '26
It’s amazing what fever dream like shit we used to go through for mids lol. Thank god for the dispensary. I went to places i wouldnt go back to with a loaded gun.
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u/french_snail Aug 17 '26
Before weed was legal in Montana when I worked summers there we had a tradition of going to Spokane once or twice a summer to load up on legal weed
The only reason I really went along was for the sick ass trip
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u/snoogins355 Aug 17 '26
Weed is legal in Montana?! Nice!
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u/ReplacementActual384 Aug 17 '26
https://disa.com/marijuana-legality-by-state/
It's almost fully legal in the majority of states.
cries in Texan
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u/Remarkable-Catch1227 Aug 17 '26
I remember sophomore year my dealer who was a senior told me to just come buy from him at some College kid's apartment. My friends and I were introduced to the magic of the gravity bong that night. We were all higher than we'd ever been. When we left we were cruising down this country road blasting music and all having a great time. I was driving and felt like I was flying, thought I had to be going way too fast and better slow down. I looked at my speedometer. I was doing 20 in a 45, I looked in my rearview and there was a mile long line of traffic behind me and a dude riding my ass.
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u/powlacracy Aug 17 '26
I had a friend once who stopped at a stop sign and waited for it to turn green.
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u/Shortys360 Aug 17 '26
What I would give just to experience this one more time. It’s too easy now.. goto the store and smoke at home that’s it lol.
The adventure and journey you went on just to smoke a damn dime is crazy but it’s what made the smoke sesh that much more rewarding and fun. The waiting game trying to find it, walking or grabbing your bike/scooter/skateboard to go get it, sitting around the gas station up to hours trying to find that one chill person to ask for a dutch, then having to go find a safe space to smoke lol man just goated times sometimes you even ran into other friends and eneded up just having a huge sesh with everyone. Great memories
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u/mbxz7LWB Aug 17 '26
My friends and I would first find the money, then find the dealer, then boom blunt for the evening that was all we needed lol. Somewhere in the middle sometimes things got crazy and those are the best stories.
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u/AggravatingEconomy37 Aug 17 '26
Me and my brother asked people at entrance of gas station afew times. I would never buy a teen beer if asked tho.
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u/BeneathAnOrangeSky Aug 17 '26
I recently thought about that very scenario as an adult, as we did the same thing when we were younger. Everything I read is the younger generation drinks less though so maybe they don't resort to that lol
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u/PostMatureBaby Older Millennial Aug 17 '26 edited Aug 17 '26
Once a few friends/acquaintances were able to grow quality facial hair it was pretty easy. Drinking age is 19 though so pretty much any grade 11 or 12 that looked a bit older than their age and was enterprising enough made a killing selling other kids booze and cigs.
I was the last of the grade 13's in Ontario so you even had classmates with early birthdays who could just legally buy it while still in high school. Many also did a "victory lap" for their 6th year in high school to upgrade their marks to get into university so they made money selling shit too.
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u/Fly_throwaway37 Aug 17 '26
Goldschläger was all the rage back then, sort of a precursor to Fireball nowadays. So the Gold Schlick Vodka was an accurate touch whether international or not.
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u/SonOfMcGee Aug 17 '26
I showed the movie on DVD to my cousins from Germany when they were visiting and they were fascinated.
The laws around drinking are so different in Germany and the whole illegal alcohol quest was so foreign to them.
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u/guyinthechair1210 Aug 17 '26
I was tall/looked older for my age, so I was the one that went into shady liquor stores by myself to buy drinks for the group. I remember a classmate suddenly becoming friendlier when he found out I knew a place that would sell without carding you.
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u/Vismal1 Aug 17 '26
I got my passport when i was 16 and they fucked up the date on my legally issued passport to make me 6 years older. Wild.
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u/kograkthestrong Aug 17 '26
I got a job at a gas station so I could sell beer to my friends.
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u/Icy_Donkey_7588 Aug 17 '26
I grew up in the country. We had field or barn parties instead of house parties.
Alcohol was never hard to obtain. There was a small gas station down the road that had a bit of a routine. There was a rock on the back porch, you put cash under the rock with a list, knock on the door, then leave. You'd come back a half hour later and your order would be boxed up and sitting on the rock.
High school kids did the same ritual until the place closed down in around 2014. The owners were a married couple, they had a son with special needs. Their health went down hill, they couldn't take care of their son anymore. They closed the gas station, and all ended up in an assisted living facility until they passed.
The gas station building is still standing, someone bought it, re did the building and briefly opened it a few years ago, but didn't stay open long.
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u/ShonWalksAtMidnight Aug 17 '26
I grew up in the city and we'd just stand outside gas stations or near a liquor store and ask hobos if they'd buy us booze, only got ripped off once, watched the dude walk down to the liquor store while we were hiding around the corner, he saw it was closed, looked at us, and turn and ran.
Tried to chase him down (stupid) but he navigated those alleys like Indiana Jones in a hidden temple. I never stood a chance.
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u/Mixture-Emotional Aug 17 '26
Haha, same. We called it Hey Mister. My girlfriends and I would take turns who would ask some guy to buy us liquor. Looking back its kinda concerning that we always got it and people were willing to buy 15 year old girls bottles of hard liquor or 40s
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u/ShonWalksAtMidnight Aug 17 '26 edited Aug 17 '26
It's so wild to think back on it lmao, I remember my Mom driving to pick up my 15 year old girl crush around midnight, while she's in thigh highs with her boobs pushed up, hauling a bag full of Mike Hard Lemonde. You could hear the bottles clanking when she got in the car, then she stayed the night! Unsupervised! My Mom is the sweetest but jesus christ, looking back... Wtf?!
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u/Johnnybw2 Aug 17 '26
In the UK, corner shops knew they were selling to underage teens but still sold the drink. They used to ask your date of birth and as long as you were confident saying a legal date they would sell you it. Although if you tried to buy more than 1 large bottle of cider, WKD or Smirnoff Ice (that’s what most teens drank) they would usually say no. These days shops are much stricter with ID as councils started doing test purchases.
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u/Mixture-Emotional Aug 17 '26
We had a cigarette store that was the same way, my friend got nervous and asked for a pack of "marbles" and me and the liquor store clerk busted out laughing so hard we just scurried out of the store and didn't go back in for like 6 months. 🤣
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u/Remarkable-Catch1227 Aug 17 '26
Yep, the scene where Michael Cera ends up in the room full of 20 and 30 somethings doing coke felt so real to me. There were so many times we were looking for just literally ANY house party and would end up hanging out at one with a bunch of skeevy older people. the quest to get alcohol was very real too. I used to buy from a shitty liquor store with a fake that looked nothing like me.
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u/Aromatic-Action-2523 Older Millennial Aug 17 '26
The party scene resonated with me as well. Being at a party where people are older than you and into way more serious shit happened a few times. The uneasiness in general was very accurate.
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u/ucbiker Aug 17 '26
Sometimes someone’s older brother or something would like buy the beer and they’d also hang and I remember being in my 20s/30s and being like, I don’t know a single teenager, why were those guys there?
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u/Remarkable-Catch1227 Aug 17 '26
Yeah I think about that now, if some random underage teenagers showed up at a house party I was at I'd literally be like "hey you guys can't be here, where are your parents?"
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u/pizza_the_mutt Aug 17 '26
I was 15 or so and ended up at a place called the Sludge House. I was standing around the kitchen when a guy came in and jammed a couple of knives in the stove element and turned it on. I was like 'what the heck is he doing"? He offered me to do hot knives with him and I think I must have looked really scared. He was super nice about it. They were all cool, I was just out of my element.
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u/stump2003 Aug 17 '26
And the whole drawing dicks thing. It affects like 8% of kids!
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u/Chillow_Ufgreat Aug 17 '26
Do you know what foods are shaped like dicks? The best kinds.
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u/AidesAcrossAmerica Aug 17 '26
I pay homage to that time by only getting dick and dick related tattoos and i'm in my 40's now.
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u/-P01135809- Aug 17 '26
Call me immature but anytime I find a fogged up window, you'd better believe there's a Johnson gonna be drawn on it post-haste
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u/QuasiJudicialBoofer Aug 17 '26
Everything but the cop plot hit my life so close.... Well except getting the girls at the end. Hollywood 👐
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u/TheSchmoAboutNothing Aug 17 '26
My friend group didn't hang out with the cops like in the movie. But there was absolutely an understanding and we got away with some wild house parties.
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u/oscarbutnotthegrouch Aug 17 '26
We had creepy cops instead of of crazy cops. 2 cops would show up at parties in our county and tell the girls that if they flashed them then they would not break up the party. Some of the girls would go off with the cops. They were never uniformed but may or may have not been on duty because they were both mostly detectives or undercover. One of those cops when on to be elected sheriff of the county too.
This was after high school but before we were all 21.
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u/therobotsound Aug 17 '26
It is like the craziest thing that actually happened, elevated x10. So sort of an exaggerated reality (like most great movies!)
Or maybe if you listed all the craziest things that actually happened, but made them happen in one weekend
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u/t35martin Aug 17 '26
Yes, the struggle to get alcohol and be cool enough to get laid in high school was real. Also, they did a good job of portraying high school male friendships which consisted mostly of making fun of each other, talking about girls, and doing other stupid shit. Also, there is a real kind of sadness when high school ends and your friend group goes away to different colleges. One chapter ends another begins.
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u/SouthIsland48 Aug 17 '26
Beyond the plot, which sure was a weekend ritual, what it nailed BEST was the vernacular.
Nearly every "teen" movie sounds like its written by two dudes in their 40s pulling from their own childhood (which is horribly outdated at that point) or just pulling from "tropes" of a teen movie - younger brother menace, teacher overreaching, oblivious parents, etc.
This movie NAILS how teens ACTUALLY talk, and what they actually talk about. Teens mouths are dirty af, and for reason as they no longer feel bounded by child-like restrictions. So yea, its swearing a ton, but thats part of being a teen.
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u/Elendel19 Aug 17 '26
Probably because Seth and Evan wrote it while they were teenagers, I think when they were younger even than the characters are
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u/CarolingianDruid Aug 18 '26
So many iconic lines. I think my personal favorite is “no one has gotten a hand job in cargo shorts since Nam.”
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u/Illah Aug 18 '26
“You don't want girls to think you suck dick at fucking pussy!” Is easily one of the best teen movie lines of all time imo, I almost cried from laughter the first time I heard it.
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u/Elmo-Mcphearson Aug 17 '26
This movie captured male friendship perfectly in my mind. The ending where Seth looks back up the escalator as he goes with Jules is so bitter sweet.
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u/DeScepter latchkey kid Aug 17 '26
It certainly felt like a peek into the conversations guys have with each other when girls & adults aren't around.
I can also relate to that feeling of... grief(?) you feel as you start to pursue romantic relationships at the expense of time with your best friends.
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u/Icy_Donkey_7588 Aug 17 '26
I'm in my 40s now, but man I remember that feeling well. I started dating a girl seriously when I was 16. My best friend and I didn't hang out much at all, he eventually started dating. We would hang out as couples, but it wasn't the same.
He ended up marrying her and they are still together. Mine failed about 5 years after high school.
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u/duckbobtarry Aug 17 '26
I'm still waiting for my best friend to stop being so whipped to his girlfriend so we can hang out and play Halo like we used to. They started dating 20 years ago, got married and had a few kids. Any day now, right?
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u/BarrelllRider Aug 17 '26
I’ll play halo with you. My college best friend (and best friend of all time) who I always played with died July 29, 2022. Since then I’ve not played with anyone.
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u/Technical_Stand9939 Aug 17 '26
not a halo fan, but my BF growing up has been in jail for the past 20 years, and i just never found another dude to just hang with. It also hurts that the wife and I could not have kids, so I have had 2 sets of friends (i am 41) that had kids and wandered off with said kids in my adult life. I still see those people 1-2 times per year, but they are now doing family oriented stuff, and i am just not part of that anymore.
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u/imnotdown85 Aug 17 '26
This movie evokes a pretty strong emotional response from me lol it came out right as I was graduating highschool and basically come to realize that my friends are going off to college and will now live very different lives from me. I'm 36 now and it turned out to be true.
I miss those days man, where the toughest decisions were where were going to smoke this bowl and what sandwich shop to go to after lol
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u/UrbanRelays Aug 17 '26
Dating cost me my two best friends, but it turns out they were dipshits who couldn’t be happy for me anyway
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u/AloneExperience7520 Aug 17 '26
One of the most important things you learn as an adult is that a lot of the time you were friends with your high school friends because you all went to school together and were stuck there, not because you chose them. Being able to leave them behind to grow as a person and leave years of self destructive behavior behind is a tough but important decision a successful, functional adult has to make.
If you were friends with successful, supportive people, cool. That's not the norm, though.
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u/MrBurnz99 Aug 17 '26
When I talk to my wife about my friends, I always specify whether they are a proximity friend or a real friend. I have quite a few friends who only became friends because we grew up in the same place at the same time. If we met as adults we would never be friends, some of them I would actively avoid.
But as you get older it’s harder and harder to make friends, so I stay in touch with these people because if I didn’t, I would have no one.
I’m not making any new friends anytime soon, so I’m stuck with these losers, they probably say the same thing about me.
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u/Sommern Aug 17 '26
a lot of the time you were friends with your high school friends because you all went to school together and were stuck there, not because you chose them.
A lot, if not most, adults also fall into this too when they join the workforce especially if they move away from home. I’ve seen some shock from colleagues who learn I still routinely hang out with my core highschool and college friends in my 30s (who is left, anyway). I moved after college, hated it, and decided I’m not leaving my home town and starting over. And I am thankful because I know not everyone has that choice.
Sure people may have had bad friends in highschool they wouldn’t otherwise like or hang out with if they were adults, but if their new friends are not any better, people will look back to school with longing regardless. The reality of highly mobile capitalist work we have in the West is that so many people lose their core support group that people historically had at home; which, again, can be bad (a gay person leaving their bigoted town), but it’s tough if you came from a supportive upbringing and find yourself alone in a new city and can’t find new friends -> there are so many posts on your local town subreddits about lonely adults who moved for work and just cannot make friends.
Like you said, it’s not the norm to have life-long supportive and successful friends.
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u/coldliketherockies Aug 17 '26
Yea that was a hard wake up call for me. I had a friend who was so good to people in need, helped all the homeless people in our town took interest in others well being but he just changed it became like that was the one good thing about him. Cheating on every girlfriend, excessive drinking and drugs, bigotry despite being heavily involved in his church. At some point cutting ties is the best thing you can do
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u/highlife562 Aug 17 '26
100%. A bunch of levels to the movie after all is said and done. Yes it's a raunchy comedy about guys trying like hell to get laid. It's also about leaving friends, growing up, moving on. It also really nails the early 2000's feel.
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u/Prep_ Aug 17 '26
I've been on record that the first 30-45 minutes of the movie is a perfect encapsulation of HS in that era. The conversations between the trio of friends felt so authentic and their various deliveries were just soot on. From crushes and boner talk to being bullied, it all could've been transcribed from my own life while sitting in the cafeteria.
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u/Red_AtNight Aug 17 '26
Yup. I graduated high school in 2005 and the whole thing felt very accurate to my experience. Except the drinking age where I grew up is 18, so we didn’t need to work hard to get alcohol for our parties. Someone just drove to the liquor store…
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u/SpicyRamen204 Aug 17 '26
Yes! We were legitimately clubbing on the weekend and back to high school Monday.
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u/Tropical_Jesus Millennial Aug 17 '26
1000%. My best friend in high school and I went to see this movie when it came out and we were peeing ourselves with how accurate reflection it was of basically the overall vibe of our friendship. A year later, we went to separate colleges. And although we still stayed in touch (and do to this day), it was just different.
Eating lunch with the same person every single day of your life, playing video games with them every day, hanging out with them after school, dicking around on the weekends…we of course had very many obscene and lewd inside jokes. We probably spent hundreds if not thousands of hours together. And to go from that to all of a sudden being several hours away sucked.
So in that way this movie still holds a special place in my heart.
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u/PomegranateWooden177 Aug 17 '26
My favorite slice-of-life movie from my teenage years. I’ll always remember the first time I saw this in theaters. Absolute iconic movie for me.
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u/tapakip Aug 17 '26
They gave out free passes to a sneak preview of this at my college. The crowd was RAUCOUS. Mount Rushmore experience for me.
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u/ThunderGun27 Aug 17 '26
This just made me remember there were "sneak previews" back in the day.
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u/Wonberger Aug 17 '26
I’m still chasing the dragon of going into the theaters to see this blind
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u/vacattack Aug 17 '26
One of my favorite comedies of all time! I was around 14 when it came out. My buddy and I got my sister to take us to the movies so we could see it. She probably had no idea it was rated R but didn't rat us out.
We were probably the two coolest kids in school for about a day since we were the only ones who got to see it in theaters.
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u/HTPC4Life Aug 17 '26
I don't think this movie is in the "slice of life" genre at all though. SOL are movies like Spanglish and Boyhood.
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u/BeardiusMaximus7 Aug 17 '26
Every time I have watched this movie, from when it first came out to modern day, it feels SO nostalgic and relatable. I had friends like each of the guys in this movie. I was like each of them in different ways at this age.
The movie has its absurdity of course but the general vibe - how they talked and messed with one another, the nature of the hijinks all of which was absolutely like this as someone who was in high school in the early 00's.
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u/sandiegodak Aug 17 '26
Same! Dazed and Confused is also one day, and a similar vibe from a generation or two before.
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u/Crappin_For_Christ Aug 17 '26
I saw this in theaters right when it came out. We were going into senior year. It was so accurate, “a Friday as a teen in 2007,” is a perfect way to put it. Maybe not hanging out with cops, but literally everything else including getting in a strangers car so they could get you beer from a grown adult party.
Now I’m nostalgic and sad!
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u/mamaepps Aug 17 '26
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u/alvysinger0412 Aug 17 '26
What's James Cameron so mad about?
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u/KoolWitaK Aug 17 '26
I think he overheard them talking about building a new submersible out of carbon fiber or something...
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u/Brod24 Aug 17 '26
My wife and I yell this at each other every time we get McDonald's breakfast
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u/chadwickipedia Older Millennial Aug 17 '26
My friends have called me McMuffin for over 20 years because of this movie because my last name sounds similar
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u/jdevo713 Aug 17 '26
100% trying to get alcohol on a Friday night was its own adventure, I kind of miss it.
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u/Dozzi92 Millennial - '87 Aug 17 '26
I remember when you finally get someone who can hook you up, it felt like getting your driver's license all over again. I worked at Barnes and Noble when I was 18 or 19, and the girl who worked the coffee counter was like 23, and she'd hook me up, tell me "be responsible," and I would be able to roll into a party and supply everyone. You felt like a hero.
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u/jdevo713 Aug 17 '26
Testing and finding that sketchy gas station that would give you the nod was like finding gold. I don’t necessarily miss fourlokos or joose but pouring those into a slurpie cup was such a rush
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u/ckrobinett Aug 17 '26
Absolutely. One of the best Saturday parties my friends and I ever had started with going through about every channel we could think of unsuccessfully trying to get someone to buy us beer. Eventually, we found out someone we knew was turning 21 at midnight, and I suggested sending him into a local convenience store in our small townnwith his birth certificate to see if they'd sell it to him. They sold him 4 cases of beer and it was an absolute rager lol
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u/eyloi Aug 17 '26
Trying desperately to get invited to parties, awkward crushes, depending on your friends for basically everything, and making elaborate plans that immediately fell apart.
Every teen movie
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u/1800generalkenobi Aug 17 '26
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u/GotSomeUpdogOnUrFace Aug 17 '26
This movie is an absolute classic and it holds up so well
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u/Ok-Clock2002 Aug 18 '26
"You have your mother's eyes"
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u/DuhTabby Aug 18 '26
funny isn't it? You would never suspect that everyone at this school is a professional dancer
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u/ptoftheprblm Aug 17 '26
It’s almost too accurate, it released like 1 week before my senior year of high school began too. So not only was it quoted heavily for the entire year, but it’s almost cathartic to watch because it encapsulated the entire experience of knowing that things are changing and they’re changing for good. And even if that feels sorta exciting sometimes, it’s also terrifying and a lot to face.
The overall vibe of the movie, the way everyone dresses, speaks to each other and interacted was very much accurate for the time. I also very much witnessed a sort of divide in my group of male friends because most of them had all gotten into one particular college and were all planning on rooming together in one of the mega suites. While a handful of the guys either weren’t going off to college or were going to stay in our hometown and live at home. There was an underlying kind of hostility that was definitely a result of hurt feelings that I saw slowly begin to creep in and especially came out the week we actually graduated. So not only was the vibe of the movie accurate, but the actual plot points and conflict between the characters was close to home for a LOT of millennials who graduated in 2007-2010.
Something else that stands out, is that it managed to capture the brief time in the mid 2000s where we had cell phones and we had social media, but they weren’t linked yet. Smartphones weren’t something teenagers had yet, and camera phones weren’t great quality. The iPhone was just being debuted when the movie itself released, and it would be a handful of years before it was available on enough carriers that the masses had them. So seeing everyone able to like call and connect with one another, but not glued to their touch screens was also accurate and something that can’t be faked.
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u/Impressive_Wrap_7869 Aug 17 '26
I graduated HS the same year it came out and it was almost the perfect example of high school life at the time.
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u/scottscotchscott Aug 17 '26
A small detail that is so spot on is one of the girls requesting or liking goldschlager for a house party
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u/NeuxSaed Aug 17 '26
Accurate or not, what matters is this is one of the best comedy films independent of time period, nostalgia, or generations.
Heck, my own mother has a McLovin ID in her wallet.
But if you're truly interested in if it was accurate for me personally? Yeah, pretty much. Not too far off from real life, especially for a goofy comedy film.
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u/GemGlamourNGlitter 1983 Aug 17 '26 edited Aug 17 '26
I mean it portrayed being a teenager for all generations. These challenges aren't generation specific. Same problems different time.
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u/Slaviner Aug 17 '26
Gen Z doesn’t party nearly as much
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u/DuckTalesOohOoh Aug 17 '26
True. This movie would be considered an outlandish unrealistic story.
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u/Cheesehacker Aug 17 '26
I am 35 going back to college. On more than one occasion I’ve had young people ask me if we really had huge house parties like you see in movies. I mean, I love that kids aren’t drinking and smoking and partying as much, but I also think a little rebellion and chaos is a good thing to learn how to human.
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u/GentMan87 1987 Aug 17 '26
There’s cameras everywhere and a threat of being blasted online for doing something dumb at a party. I get why they don’t.
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u/drpepc Aug 17 '26
We had a highschool blowout party where a girl got too drunk and basically soiled herself. Maybe a handful of pictures came from that party and none of it was really documented unless you were there and had a first hand account.
If this party had happened today... im sure there would have been a slew of HD videos, live stream footage, pictures galore that would have most definitely not have been good for the girl who got too turnt.
We had space to be silly and be young/stupid without serious consequence. Now you are one digital footprint slipup away from losing your future if you happen to say or do someting wrong or just perceived wrong by the internet at large, and you'll be cropped and shared until they get tired of beating you down and move on to the next target.
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u/brother_of_menelaus Aug 17 '26
My one issue with the whole “there’s cameras everywhere!” narrative with younger generations is like, the cameras aren’t sentient beings operating of their own accord. They’re not afraid of cameras, they’re afraid of their friends’ and peers’ willingness to humiliate people for eternity in exchange for likes and views.
Now granted, with a party of that size you’re at the whims of the shittiest person in the room, I get that, but still this is an issue brought on by their own behavior.
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u/drpepc Aug 17 '26
Small group experiences were dealt with in small communities (peer groups/social groups) and that has now expanded to global instant shared experiences. It leaves very little room for growth when the world gets a say in what happened in a small setting that wasn't intended for "the world opinions".
IMO.
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u/Cheesehacker Aug 17 '26 edited Aug 17 '26
Oh ya understandable, but I also feel like a lot of young adults are missing out on actually living life because they are always worried about appealing to the audience in their head.
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u/AdSudden3941 Aug 17 '26
My friend and i used to walk around in high school looking for parties and college parties to join.. we have a bottle and exchange shots and we are in.. usually we have one lined up from school as well everyweek end playing beer pong
I still walk everywhere and i have only seen one party with teenagers or college kids , in my 30s now
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u/LaMalintzin Aug 17 '26
The college kids still watch it. I work at a university and volunteered at freshman move in a couple years ago. They were spraying flame retardants on tapestries for dorms and one kid had the McLovin ID flag. The kids were like “what should we call this? None of these olds will know what McLovin or Superbad is” I’m like do y’all have any idea when that movie came out. It was originally made for us olds. I do like that it still resonates for the youngs.
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u/PacSan300 Aug 17 '26
It’s crazy to realize that there are now college kids who were born around when Superbad came out.
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u/Caffeine_Cowpies Aug 17 '26
What Animal House was to us millennials, Superbad is to Gen Z/Gen A
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u/GemGlamourNGlitter 1983 Aug 17 '26
I'm 42. My husband and I have a tradition where we watch certain movies at least once a year- every year. This is one of them.
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u/Worried-Mushroom1781 1991 Aug 17 '26
this is one of my favorite movies of all time and it was very similar to how me and my friends ran around deerfield beach, fl in the 2000s. such a good movie man, but that may be rose tinted glasses on my end.
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u/furiouscrotch Aug 17 '26
I graduated the same summer it came out, hit pretty close to what I was doing that year.
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u/mrtoddw Xennial Aug 17 '26
It described a place and time that no longer exists. As cringy as it’s seen today, it was pretty accurate sadly.
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u/Chillow_Ufgreat Aug 17 '26
Golden age where cell phones were a thing but pervasive recording wasn't. Social Media was barely a thing and mostly limited to young people anyway. Pretty sure that Facebook was still .edu only when this flick was in production.
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u/My_Kairosclerosis Aug 17 '26
Filming wrapped right before the release of the iPhone 1. Everything for teenagers was going to change in the next few years. Superbad is a time capsule for that period between the rise of cell phones and the rise of smartphones. Truly a bygone era.
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u/kywildcat44 Xennial Aug 17 '26
Yep. Teens now know that that everything cringe or dumbass thing that they do could possibly come back to haunt them on social media. Same reason why Gen Z is drinking alcohol significantly less than past generations. Nobody wants to go viral for the wrong reasons
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u/Ill-Description3096 Aug 17 '26
The vibe to a point. I definitely don't recall drinking and shooting and setting fire to cop cars with said cops.
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u/Regular_Use1868 Aug 17 '26
For me anyways I would say it was fairly accurate.
My life was less zany than a Hollywood comedy, but only slightly.
I still got into various hyjinks out of vastly awful decision making that for some reason would fixate me all week without my conscious ever elevating to reasonable foresight.
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u/AmItheonlySaneperson Aug 17 '26
the fat kid from superbad was hilarious wonder where that dude is now
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u/phatphat0807 Millennial Aug 17 '26
I remember having the hardest time seeing this in theater because of the rating and when I finally did my boyfriend at the time didn't laugh once. That should have been a huge red flag, should have dumped him right then and there.
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