Three high school losers (dweeby Michael Cera, chubby Jonah Hill, and myopic Christopher Mintz-Plasse) try to score beer and get laid at a cool-kids party, a mission treated with the approximate importance of D-day in this comedy produced by Judd Apatow (Knocked Up) and coscripted by Apatow regular Seth Rogen. Apatow has always stressed the importance of open auditions to turn up genuinely odd kids from the hinterlands; he found Rogen in one such audition for his cult NBC series, Freaks and Geeks, which this project often recalls, and Rogen in turn recruited Mintz-Plasse from an open call. The movie loses credibility with the arrival of Rogen and Bill Hader as two uniformed patrolmen who are drunker and crazier than any high schooler could ever get, but the variety of complications thrown at the three pubescent heroes raises this a cut above most raunchy comedies. Greg Mottola directed.