Good Boys (2019)

This is the third comedy I’ve seen in which someone mistakenly thinks anal beads for a necklace. The fact that I can’t remember the other two films should be an indicator of how memorable I find these raunchy comedies once it’s all said and done. (I’d look it up, but I fear what Google might show me when I look up the terms necessary to find ‘anal bead movies’.)

Good Boys marks the debut directorial feature film effort from writer-producer Gene Stupnitsky, known more for his production work on TV fare featuring awkward situations for its characters in the American version of “The Office” and “Hello Ladies”. He’s written feature screenplays before as well, but not ones I rate very highly, co-writing with partner Lee Eisenberg the scripts for lackluster comedies like Year One and Bad Teacher. It’s another film that dabbles with remaking the formula of Superbad (coincidentally from the same producers, Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg, Jonah Hill, etc.), but doesn’t generate the same laughs as that film from 2007, or even that other notable one from 2019, the much more comedically adept Booksmart.

The story surrounds three 12-year-old boys, best friends since kindergarten, dubbing themselves the Bean Bag Boys because — well, they all had beanbags. Now they’re in middle school and finding it hard to cope with the pressure of their peers to be considered cool among them. Max has a crush and might be able to finally make a connection with the object of his desires once he gets invited to a ‘kissing party’ where the popular kids are all going. Trouble is, he doesn’t know how to kiss (or, apparently, how to figure out where to find out). Thor is the gifted singer who gives up on it because he doesn’t want to be teased, especially as he already is getting the nickname of “Sippy Cup” because he refuses to drink from a bottle of beer with the other boys. Lucas’s parents are getting divorced, leaving him feeling out of sorts, and his sense of right and wrong tend to make him unable to understand why his friends are so willing to bend the rules to score points with other kids that don’t seem to care about their well-being at all.

Life is awkward enough for sixth-grade boys, on the verge of being teenagers and dealing with the onset of puberty, sex, drinking, drugs, and peer pressure.  Unfortunately, those awkward moments we all go through just aren’t good enough for the makers of the film, as a variety of situations are concocted that would be extremely awkward for adults as well.

The boys playing with a drone in one scene, ostensibly to spy on the teenage girls next door on the hope they will learn how to kiss leading up to the party. This extremely contrived angle might have yielded a decent chuckle, but soon, having to recover it before Max’s dad finds out every time it gets away from them becomes a major plot point within the film. Although it is a memorably component of Good Boys, it’s hard to remember what was supposed to be amusing about this aspect once it’s all said and done.

For a film about growing up, the makers of the film seem pretty cavalier about what it finds funny, thinking that pushing the envelope of taste is all that’s needed to make for comedy. The film opens with a masturbation joke that I still don’t quite understand involving the tethering of cords to the bedroom door.  There’s a scene in which the boys whip out a paintball gun to shoot at some frat guys selling drugs, causing pratfalls that fill up run time without actually pushing the story forward or generating new or unexpected laughs. Filling up even more screen time is a scene where the boys run across a busy freeway trying not to get run over (let’s hope no kids actually attempt this thinking it might be fun). Even worse is the ‘molly’ subplot where the boys end up in possession of a vitamin bottle full of ecstasy, yielding the movie’s tackiest moments. As I will tell my seven-year-old daughter, “If you’re going to say something inappropriate, it had better be funny, or you’re just going to get in trouble.”

Good Boys isn’t the worst comedy, is it does manage to eke out a chuckle here and there, but there isn’t enough variety in the comedy or situations to keep things from eventually going stale for extended periods of time. It also reaches too far in terms of bad taste, going from a tale that we should all be able to relate to, having been in similar situations, to just upping the raunch factor to try to drum up some easy laughs. The writers seem to think that we’ll come to care about these kids by the end, but they aren’t set up with enough depth to make it feel like they’re anything more than props for comedy. If we’re supposed to be peeking in on lifelong friends, or even kids who are well-established among their own families, in their community, or among mates at school, you’d never know it from the film.

As with all of the other raunchy comedies that have come out in the wake of American Pie, they think that all will be forgiven if there can be moments in which the characters find out something more about themselves and each other, trying for a bit of sentiment underneath all of the brazen attempts to squeeze out vulgar laughs. Picking its spots for R-rated material more efficiently to employ the shock jokes would have delivered much more than continuously delivering the same gag with different sex toys or vulgarities thinking the repetition would elevate snickers into guffaws, or guffaws into audiences rolling in the aisles. If you find yourself unable to resist laughing every time you hear a kid use an F-bomb South Park-style or play with a sex doll without knowing what it is (they think it’s for CPR), you’re likely the target audience for this film.  Everyone else will find Good Boys to be not as good as advertised.

Qwipster’s rating: C

MPAA Rated: R for strong crude sexual content, drug and alcohol material, and language throughout – all involving tweens
Running Time: 89 min.

Cast: Jacob Tremblay, Keith L. Williams, Brady Noon, Will Forte, Molly Gordon, Midori Francis, Izaac Wang, Millie Davis, Lil Rey Howery, Retta
Small role: Stephen Merchant, Michaela Watkins, Lee Eisenberg
Director: Gene Stupnitsky
Screenplay: Lee Eisenberg, Gene Stupnitsky