![\"\"](\"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/good-boys.jpg\")
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\nR-rated\ncoming-of-age comedies like \u201cGood Boys\u201d have tapered off in the past decade, at\nleast in the mainstream. There have been a number of small-scale successes like\n\u201cLady Bird,\u201d \u201cEighth Grade,\u201d and this summer\u2019s \u201cBooksmart,\u201d but those films fared\nbetter critically than commercially. I think it goes back to 2007\u2019s \u201cSuperbad\u201d and\nhow that film nailed the formula so perfectly that for a decade most filmmakers\nwanted to stay away from the genre for fear of unfavorable comparisons. Or\nmaybe it\u2019s because the teen subgenre du jour shifted naturally from raunchy\ncomedies to supernatural entities to dystopian futures to romances complicated\nby diseases. Or maybe it\u2019s because the past decade has seen a rise in\nsensitivity toward topics that were once fodder for these types of comedies;\nthings like bullying, sexual identity, and the objectification of women can\u2019t\nbe played for laughs in this era the way they could in the past. But I\nprimarily subscribe to the \u201cSuperbad\u201d theory, which explains why, while\nwatching \u201cGood Boys,\u201d I couldn\u2019t help but think the film exemplified a\nredundancy that it could never shake. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The\nmuch-hyped angle of this film is that the main characters are not \u201cteens,\u201d but\nrather \u201ctweens,\u201d or sixth-graders. As such, they have much less understanding\nof sex, drugs, love, and life than the high-schoolers who usually populate\nthese movies. Those characters have a lot to learn themselves, but these kids\nare much further back toward square one. Often this naivete will work to the\nfilm\u2019s detriment, as it can be inconsistent as to what the kids do and don\u2019t\nknow. I came out of the film with a long list of complaints to the effect of\n\u201cHow can they know about X and not know about Y?\u201d I\u2019m hesitant to get specific,\nbut I found it odd that they had an arsenal of jokes ready to go about the\nappearance of child predators. Forget high school, I don\u2019t think I learned\nabout that stereotype until college. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The\nstory follows three friends (Jacob Tremblay, Keith L. Williams, Brady Noon) as\nthey anticipate their first kissing party. They want to go in knowing how to\nkiss, and the internet isn\u2019t much help for some reason (for the record, typing\n\u201cHow to Kiss Tutorial\u201d into Google Videos yields over 89,000 results), so they\nconvince Tremblay to steal his father\u2019s drone and use it to spy on a pair of\nteenaged, allegedly sexually active neighbors (Molly Gordon and Midori\nFrancis). The girls get wise and steal the drone, refusing to give it back,\nwhich could get Tremblay grounded and cost him the party. The boys steal the\ngirls\u2019 drugs to use as leverage, leading to an escalating series of shenanigans\nas they try to negotiate the drone\u2019s return. Along the way, the friends\u2019 bond\nis tested in a way they never thought possible. Are they the friends they think\nthey are or will this escapade prove to be their undoing? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In\nand of itself, \u201cGood Boys\u201d is a fine film. There\u2019s a reason why the relatively\ndormant \u201cdirty t(w)een comedy\u201d genre is being revived here, and it\u2019s because the\nfilm possesses cleverness and heart. The boys\u2019 personalities and chemistry are\naffable, and I\u2019d say the jokes hit at an acceptable rate. I laughed out loud a\nfew times (my favorite was a joke whose punchline was \u201cWhat\u2019d you do?\u201d), but\nmore often I found myself making the circular \u201cmove it along\u201d gesture with my\nhand. The ending does drag, but the bigger issue is that twelve years since the\npeak of the genre is not a long enough absence to make my heart grow fonder. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Grade: B-<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cGood Boys\u201d is rated R for strong\ncrude sexual content, drug and alcohol material, and language throughout \u2013 all\ninvolving tweens. Its running time is 89 minutes. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Bob Garver R-rated coming-of-age comedies like \u201cGood Boys\u201d have tapered off in the past decade, at least in the mainstream. There have been a number of small-scale successes… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":44247,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[108],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44246"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44246"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44246\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44247"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}