McLovin From Superbad Is 40 Today

McLovin from Superbad turns 40 today, June 3, 2021, meaning the character has finally lived up to the age on his infamous fake I.D. Superbad fans know the sight of that driver’s license and every detail on it; indeed, that I.D. is a part of an entire generation’s collective memory of teenage years, shenanigans, and beloved coming-of-age films like Superbad that go with them. Superbad co-writer, star, and producer Seth Rogen commemorated the McLovin milestone with a social media post: “Happy 40th birthday McLovin. (We wrote this joke when we were 14 years old)”.

If you don’t get the reference that Rogen is making in the caption above: he and Superbad co-writer/producer Evan Goldberg first wrote the film when they were teenagers, and apparently came up with the McLovin I.D. gag at the tender age of 14.

For anyone who hasn’t seen Superbad (who are you?), one of the film’s standout moments is a scene when young geek Fogell (a very young and baby-faced Christopher Mintz-Plasse) walks into a local liquor store to buy booze for his sort-of friends Seth (Jonah Hill) and Evan (Michael Cera). The no-nonsense cashier (Erica Vittina Phillips) clearly sees that the scrawny boy in her face is not the supposedly 40-year-old Hawaii man named “McLovin” from his obviously fake license – but before the discussion can be resolved, Fogell is knocked out cold by a crook who proceeds to rob the store.

The entire “McLovin” subplot of Superbad was a twisted take on the teenage right of passage that is having a fake I.D. In Rogen and Goldberg’s hands, the story became something of a fairy tale for geeks: through a series of misadventures after the liquor store, Fogell sees his “McLovin” I.D. evolve into a mythic persona that earns him a bad-boy reputation – as well as some actual lovin’ from his thong-wearing crush, Nicola.

Offscreen, McLovin earned Christopher Mintz-Plasse a career run in Hollywood, making the McLovin experience a fairy tale for him too. It’s hard not to smile thinking of Fogell being somewhere on this fortieth birthday, breaking out the old McLovin I.D., and being taken by that long-dormant bad-boy spirit he had for that brief summer after high school… Did we just come up with the idea for a Superbad sequel? You tell us…