Movie Review by Cindy Summers
Good Boys
2 palm trees out of 4
Having been invited to his first kissing party, Max and his friends Lucas and Thor set out to discover how kissing is actually done being only 12 years old and having never kissed a girl before. Not able to find reasonable answer from the internet, the boys use Max’s dad’s drone against his demands it to spy on a teenage neighbor for kissing tips, but that’s when things go wrong for them leading them on an accidental adventure involving party drugs and many adult situations they must hurdle to right the wrongs of their drone incident. Released by Universal Pictures, Directed by Gene Stupnitsky, Written by Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky and staring Jacob Tremblay as Max, Keith L. Williams as Lucas and Brady Noon as Thor.
When Max is invited to his first kissing party, he elicits the help of his fellow “Bean Bag Boys” Lucas and Thor to discover the unknown world of kissing girls. As with most young people today, they begin their search for knowledge on the internet, which reveals way more than they bargained for on their quest for the basics of kissing, likely from a site such as porn7 – though kissing is still featured on those sites.
Their next plan involved spying on Max’s teenage neighbor with his dad’s drone, which he has been instructed to not touch, and unfortunately for the boys the drone is lost in the endeavor. Good news is that Max’s dad is out of town, which buys them some time to replace the drone, though the path to doing so is plagued with adult and even dangerous situations along the way.
Max has charisma and is more like a kid from the popular crowd, while Lucas has a soft sensitivity, likes fantasy adventure games and tends to always have a mild mannered demeanor and Thor is both brave and a little dense compared to his two childhood friends. They discover in the end that this is also a time in life where kids tend to go their separate ways as they go to junior high and high school, but made a pact to always be there for each other for the big things in life.
Good Boys is produced by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg who produced Superbad in 2007, a very similar story of three friends experiencing life through wild misadventures, though they were preparing for college, while the characters in Good Boys are on their way to middle school experiencing many age-inappropriate situations along the way.
I question if it would be more relatable if I had a tween in my life or were a tween or teen, but also personally felt there was too much unnecessary profanity, especially Max’s character, and honestly feel somewhat disappointed if that’s the general vocabulary of tweens today. An interesting note is the movie was actually filmed at Jacob Tremblay’s school in Vancouver.
Though the movie touches on many realistic situations for tweens, it generally does so in very vulgar and profane ways that don’t seem necessary to the story. There’s a believable innocence to their misadventures involving foreign things such as sex toys and their purpose, which for them were ideal as weapons and disguises, however think in several instances that there was just gratuitous vulgarity disguised as comedy.
Rated R 95m (for strong crude sexual content, drug and alcohol material, and language throughout – all involving tweens)
