All hail geek-god McLovin.

Mc-what?

Don't ask -- even if you snub late-comer Superbad, the summer's freakishly-fine raunch-com, you'll know of McLovin soon enough.

As played by Christopher Mintz-Plasse, he's a gawky, fastidious addition to the modern-movie lexicon of dweebdom -- and the spark that fires the action and imagination of this neo-nerd epic from producer Judd Apatow.

Like The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up (as well as Apatow's much-missed series Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared), Superbad is super-awesome -- a miracle of crudeness and charm that counters its coarseness with sincerity.

Make no mistake: Superbad is not for the faint of heart. It's wall-to-wall with porn, projectile vomit, cartoon montages of penises and enough profanity to kill a small animal. But for all its vulgarity, it never feels like it's wallowing. For that, credit scribes Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg -- who penned the script when they were teens in Vancouver. They steep the storytelling in character, not scatology, and in doing so, have made one of the filthiest, sweetest movies in memory.

A pitch-perfect Jonah Hill and Michael Cera star as Seth and Evan, joined-at-the-hip high school pals who promise to cater booze to a party in the hopes of scoring with the seemingly unattainable objects of their pent-up affections (Martha MacIsaac and Emma Stone). The lynchpin of their scheme? A nerdier-than-thou kid named Fogell who manufactures a driver's licence with just one name: McLovin. (That McLovin is also 25 and from Hawaii only intensifies Seth and Evan's consternation.)

When the liquor store is robbed and McLovin is knocked cold, Seth and Evan are left to fend for themselves while Fogell is escorted away by two off-the-wall cops played --too broadly for some tastes -- by Saturday Night Live's Bill Hader and Rogen.

Thing is, the cops fall for the ruse and for the first time in his life, Fogell (in the guise of McLovin, mind you) is an outcast no more.

Yet for all the farcical antics of their dust-till-dawn odyssey -- whether it's the chowderheads Seth and Evan stumble upon at a hilariously horrifying houseparty or McLovin's improbable outing with Hader and Rogen's renegade officers -- director Greg Mottola (The Daytrippers) grounds the hilarity in humanity and truth.

Key to this are Hill and Cera as the sex-obsessed Seth and the meeker, mumbling Evan. Their bawdy talk is merely vulgarity-as-defence-mechanism, of course, deflecting their bone-deep fears of in-the-flesh interaction with the very girls they slavishly adore.

McLovin may give Superbad its freak fuel, but it's Hill and Cera who grant it welcome heart and heft.

(This film is rated 14-A)
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