Superbad and the birds and the bees

The Washington Post's Desson Thomson has a sweet, touching, and very funny piece about taking his 15-year-old to see Superbad.

As I sat there with him, the exploits of three socially maladroit high school seniors on a mission to lose their virginity and become cool in the process no longer seemed like the sleaze-fest I had initially thought it to be, but an extended empathy encounter for him.

Thomson finds the movie communicates with his son the way his birds-and-bees talk did not. And that the movie gives them a way to connect that is very precious at an age when kids find it hard to express their feelings to their parents.

Ironic, I thought, that an R-rated comedy tells it like it is for moviegoers who are too young to actually go see it on their own. Finally, I asked my son that potentially groan-inducing, must-immediately-walk-away-from-Dad question: "What did you learn from this movie?"

"I learned that people that age are obsessed with sex -- a little bit too obsessed," he answered. And he didn't walk away.