Seth Rogen vs. Justin Long
Battle of the Frat Pack's New Pledges

When he hosted the premiere of Saturday Night Live's thirty-first season a couple of weeks back, Steve Carell used his opening monologue to crow that his summer film, The 40-Year-Old Virgin, had passed the $100 million mark, meaning that he is now "one of those guys" -- "those guys," in this case, referring to Ben Stiller, Owen Wilson, Will Ferrell, and Vince Vaughn. And while it is true that starring in financially successful films is one thing "those guys" have in common, it's not the only thing: all of them are also members of the "Frat Pack," and frequently work together (all four of the ones Carell named, for instance, having appeared in Starsky & Hutch last year). Does Carell's little ditty mean that he has been initiated into the brotherhood? Perhaps so; maybe he and Paul Rudd will be doing their ceremonial keg stands together. But if the guys aren't quite ready to give him his own room in the frat house yet, it's probably because there are a couple of dudes ahead of them in line.

Their names may not mean much to you, but Justin Long and Seth Rogen shouldn't be completely foreign to you. If you've seen a decent sampling of the Frat Pack's filmic offerings, you've seen them. They're young, true -- twenty-seven and twenty-three, respectively -- but they're Fratting far beyond their tender years. And anyway, even though the Frats haven't quite coalesced into a true comedy troupe like The State or Kids in the Hall, their frequent collaborations have clarified the niches they fill (Stiller as The Repressed Neurotic; Wilson as The Laid-Back Stoner, etc.), and frankly, none of the senior Frats is going to be convincing playing The Kid, which is exactly why they need Rogen and Long. (None of the Frats can play The Girl, either, but maybe they're on their way to rectifying that unfilled position.)

Which of the two freshman Frats deserves to prevail -- to claim the honour of being ushered into the esteemed society by allowing Jack Black to paddle the hell out of his ass? (Or whatever hazing is still allowed these days; maybe now, pledges just have to submit to such indignities as having their cell phones taken away for a few hours or being made to chug domestic beer instead of Heineken.) Rogen is our sentimental favourite, for a lot of reasons, like: he's Canadian. But wait, there's more! He's worked less, true, but that just means that nearly everything on his résumé is good, from Donnie Darko to the many writing/acting projects he's done with apparent comedy mentor Judd Apatow. Having played deadpan laconics on both Freaks & Geeks (Ken) and Undeclared (Ron), it was only natural for him to play deadpan laconic Cal in Virgin, written and directed by Apatow. In a movie crammed to the gills with amazingly talented people, from Carell and Rudd to Romany Malco and Catherine Keener, Rogen apparently isn't the least bit intimidated by his relative inexperience and gets some of the best lines ("You think 'A woman fuckin' a horse,' and you get there and...it's a woman fucking a horse...And you know what? To be honest, I just felt bad for her. We all just felt bad for her...I kinda felt bad for the horse!"), including the "Do you know how I know you're gay?" exchange he has with Rudd's David, which we just pray is available in a much longer extended scene on the eventual DVD. Best of all, Virgin taught us that Rogen even sings, and in a lovely, resonant bass. This is a guy who has gotten amazingly far in his life and career without, apparently, ever having compromised his artistic standards. He's also a guy who, when confronted with a slightly slutty girl his good friend is fleeing, will peel off his own shirt and hop in the tub with her. He's got "Frat" written all over him, probably especially written across both his ass cheeks. Or...it might be "Fart." Either way.

But Long -- is no slouch himself. He started out on the well-regarded TV comedy Ed, which was produced by no less a comic luminary than David Letterman (and it showed, if in no other respect than that a main character was named "Kenny"). From there, he's been slightly more Catholic in his career choices than Rogen, starring in such generic fare as Hair High, the Britney Spears vehicle Crossroads (as the skinny nerd Bit-Bit doesn't lose her virginity to...ouch), and both Jeepers Creepers and its sequel, of which...yes, there truly was one. But, like Missi Pyle, Long got called up to the Frat with Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story, in which he played Justin, an underdeveloped high-school student whose primary life goal was to join the cheerleading squad to attract his dream girl Amber (Julie Gonazlo). (In a little-noticed but awesome visual joke at the end of the movie, a tableau shows Justin with Amber, now both his girlfriend and gigantically pregnant.) Long also turned up as the notorious Chris Harken in the Anchorman DVD experiment, Wake Up, Ron Burgundy!, joining Rogen's one-scene "Eager Cameraman," and as an apprentice party crasher being schooled by Vaughn and Wilson for an MTV Movie Awards bit. And if Wilson and Vaughn looked like they were having a little too much fun abusing him, surely it's partly because he seemed so eager to take it and prove his comedy chops; even we might have a hard time not dealing a couple of kicks to his skinny backside, and we like him.

The thing is, Long is still playing The Kid -- specifically, high-school kids (well, his character in the current Waiting... is in community college, which, same diff) -- and the man is pushing thirty. And it would be one thing if we didn't buy it (as when we were told, in The Day After Tomorrow, that Jake Gyllenhaal's character was only supposed to be seventeen...uh, not). But the truth is that we believe it all too well: he still looks so young that we think he may have only done this to himself to prove that he actually could grow facial hair. Whereas Seth Rogen, cutting a more generous figure, consequently looks like an adult male; his Cal could have been anywhere from twenty-one to thirty-six in Virgin, and we'd have believed it. Do we award the victory to the guy who looks like he could still be The Kid ten years from now, or to the guy who'll soon be able to convince us that he could have graduated high school in the same class as Luke Wilson, therefore cementing himself not as a Frat frosh but as a fully fledged bro?

Advantage: Rogen. But, truly, it's about 99% because he's Canadian.