It Made Me SuperSleepy

August 15, 2005

I finally stumbled through SuperStud: Or How I Became a 24 Year Old Virgin by Paul Feig, and I have to say I was pretty disappointed. Superstud is the autobiographical ongoing saga of Feig, continuing on from the Kick Me, which was sincerely funny. Even with Kick Me, I felt that Paul Feig wasn’t that great a writer or a storyteller, but he did have really funny stories to tell, which made the whole thing worthwhile. For Superstud, the stories are much more conventional, repeated failings with women spawning from his own insecurities and mistakes. Barring a short chapter on autofellatio, there’s nothing that’s particularly outlandish enough to rival the Nazi banner or the cross-dressing in Kick Me.

There’s also a few bits of lazyish storytelling as well, with one chapter about his summer in California told in bullet-points. The chapter where Feig finally gets laid is formatted like a bible verse, but is interminably long and aimless. As an autobio, there are times where it feels Feig seems to going for that high level of detail for authenticity’s sake, but in a lot of ways it is a detriment to the story.

Coincidentally, Feig’s Freaks and Geeks cohort Judd Apatow is unveiling his own virgin tale next week with Steve Carell as The 40 Year Old Virgin. It’ll be interesting if he can spin better material off a similar concept by exaggerating it for comic effect.

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