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Review: 'Superbad' and 'Death at a Funeral' deliver laughs by the gross

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If you go

'Superbad'

Opens Aug. 17: Century Downtown, Century Rio, Cottonwood, Four Hills, Winrock

Rated: R

Running time: 114 min.

Director: Greg Mottola

Grade: B

'Death at a Funeral'

Opens Aug. 17: Century Downtown

Rated: R

Running time: 90 min.

Director: Frank Oz

Grade: B

Albuquerque movie theaters: shows and times

Ever do laundry and find two $20 bills in the pocket of your jeans?

Me neither, but I imagine it would feel something like today. In this sad age of sellout, never-funny PG-13 comedies, a pair of rated-R riots come crashing into theaters simultaneously.

The only question for film fans is which to see first — the gross-out laugher for 20-somethings? Or the gross-out laugher for 30-somethings?

You won't be sorry either way, which is remarkable in itself.

"Superbad"

Welcome to the High School Movie Geek Hall of Fame, McLovin. It's where Anthony Michael Hall is forever young and Spiccoli and Stifler get stoned together nightly.

Dude, can you buy us beer?

Christopher Mintz-Plasse makes the role of Fogell, aka McLovin, a classic. He's an awkward, little weirdo — lanky and doofy, with sad glasses and a nasally voice that keeps cracking. But his story is the stuff of movie heaven.

He wants to get his freak on, but a pair of brain-dead cops have other plans. By the time McLovin's night is over, he'll have burned a car and fired a gun. He'll also have a wicked shiner and memories of a night when he was the king.

It's not all about McLovin, sadly. He's actually foil for the movie's two main characters. A couple of high school pals are about to graduate and have one last night to break from the shackles of geekdom.

Seth (Jonah Hill) and Evan (Michael Cera) are losers, and they know it. But there's a raging party going down, and Fogell's got that ridiculous McLovin ID. So maybe they can buy booze, be heroes and — just once before parting ways for college — get laid like the jocks.

It doesn't go quite as expected, and for most of "Superbad's" running time the two friends fumble their way through one awkward experience after another.

Hill and Cera form a great yin and yang. Seth is a rabid potty mouth with serious issues, and Hill can deliver a joke with angry irreverence like few other actors. He pontificates on many, many sex-charged subjects (way too graphic to even touch here). Cera has an excruciating but accessible awkwardness that personifies the sad high schooler.

At times, "Superbad" is good for a laugh every minute. It sags in the middle, though, and it's too long at 114 minutes. There are serious (gay) undertones that give the film a bit of depth that doesn't feel necessary.

Seth Rogan wrote the film and plays one of the two idiot officers who chariot McLovin on his epic quest to get some. For the second time this summer ("Knocked Up"), Rogan nails it.

"Death at a Funeral"

Martha's boyfriend is naked on the roof, hallucinating badly and threatening to commit suicide. But Daniel's got no time to worry about that because he's spending his father's funeral trying to dispose of a (different) body.

There's a blackmailer to deal with, because his secret — while insanely funny — could destroy the family. Plus, Uncle Alfie's angry and stuck on the toilet, Troy has something disgusting on his hand that won't wash off, and the priest refuses to shut up about needing to be out of there by 3.

"Death at a Funeral" is an ensemble comedy that combines script and cast terrifically. It's being compared, justifiably, to "Four Weddings and a Funeral" because it's small-scale and British.

But it has a much smaller scope. The whole breezy film takes place over the span of a day in one quaint location. There are family squabbles and tensions between close friends, but nothing takes precedence over laughs.

The whole team of actors is wonderful, but Alan Tudyk (the pirate from "Dodgeball") distinguishes himself as Simon. Whacked out on wild pills for the entire film, he does something hilarious each time he's on camera.

It's seems an easy joke to dose a character with powerful drugs and turn him loose ("The Girl Next Door" did this, as well as "Bad Boys II" and "Go") but it always works.

And Peter Dinklage owns his role as a mysterious stranger. The climax of "Death at a Funeral" will have your sides splitting, and that's mostly a credit to Dinklage.

What the film's missing, though, is sex. It's so gross and the characters swear so much it almost feels like "Superbad" for the slightly older crowd. But a movie with all these different characters should have teemed with sexual tension and somehow weaved in a nasty fornication joke. And there are characters who flat-out aren't funny.

Still, you can't go wrong with "Death at a Funeral" or "Superbad." These are comedies that make you laugh. A lot.