In a new interview with People magazine, Seth Rogen was reflecting on two high school classics that he starred in – the TV series Freaks and Geeks, which has since become a cult favourite, and 2007’s Superbad.
Freaks and Geeks was way ahead of its time, as it came out in 1999-2000, but was set in 1980-81, a long time before 80s nostalgia had really hit its peak – thanks to the likes of Stranger Things. Paul Feig and Judd Apatow were behind the comedy series, and it launched the career of Linda Cardellini, as well as Apatow regulars James Franco, Jason Segel, and Martin Starr.
Asked whether there would ever be a revival, Rogen said; “I don’t think anyone would do it. It’s so rare that you do something in your career that is actually just viewed as good. I know enough now not to f— with that, to just let it be good and not try to go revisit it. And just let it exist.”
Regarding Superbad, Rogen made a bold claim – but before you get too outraged, was definitely joking; “What’s crazy is that [Rogen’s Fabelmans co-star] Gabe LaBelle is like, 19 years old and his and his friends’ favourite movie is Superbad,” Rogen said, before joking; “So it never changed for some reason. No one’s made a good high school movie since then.”
Superbad starred Jonah Hill, Michael Cera, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Bill Hader, and Emma Stone. It’s a great comedy movie, of course, but there have been many great high school movies even in the last decade – such as 2016’s The Edge of Seventeen, 2017’s Lady Bird, 2018’s Love, Simon, and 2019’s Selah and the Spades – to name but a few.
Teen movies nowadays address the anxieties of being a modern-day teenager – such as Bo Burnham’s Eighth Grade (which shows how important phones and YouTube are), as well as 2020’s Spontaneous and 2022’s The Fallout – which both address the fear of school shootings in US high schools. There’s also TV series like Euphoria, and a whole spate of recent movies dealing with teen abortion eg. Never Rarely Sometimes Always (2020), Unpregnant (2020), and Plan B (2021).
So teenagers living in 2023 don’t have to go all the way back to 2007 to find a good high school movie, and are better off looking at more recent ones which are way more relevant to what they have to deal with. Find out whether any future high school classics are coming up in 2023’s new movies.