Good Boys * (2019, Jacob Tremblay, Keith L Williams, Brady Noon, Will Forte) – Movie Review

Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg’s 2019 comedy Good Boys exploits young actors Jacob Tremblay (as Max), Keith L Williams (as Lucas) and Brady Noon (as Thor), who are way too young to be involved in this disreputable junior Hangover-style movie that features 11-year-old kids but is definitely not for kids.

It is a one-joke movie, and the joke is that the boys think they know everything about sex and drugs, but actually know very little, so they stumble on sex toys, sex references and drugs semi-innocently, supposedly to raise easy laughs. All the jokes are adult jokes at the kids’ expense. These are uneasy laughs. Of course there is also the hint that, despite all evidence to the contrary, the boys are infinitely wise, somehow know or intuit everything, and are way, way brighter and more intelligent than their useless parents.

Will Forte, Lil Rel Howery and Retta try to raise a few smiles as Max’s Dad, Lucas’s Dad and Lucas’s Mom, and Sam Richardson is good as Officer Sacks. Stephen Merchant gives his creepy English bloke another workout as a dodgy collector, who starts up being suspected by the boys as a pedophile and ends up with a sex doll, failing to raise a smile.

In the trailer, producer Seth Rogen explains to the child actors that they can be in the movie but cannot see the movie as they are too young. He thinks that is the fault of censorship. It doesn’t seem to have occurred to old Seth that if the boys are too young too see this kinds of material, they are also too young to play in it. Why is a child saying ‘f***’ funny at all, even once? Why would it continue to be funny over 90 minutes?

Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg’s dialogue and plotting are not good, setting up slack and weak comedy situations, and failing to set up hilarious gags. There is a vague hint of grown-up unpleasantness lurking at the back of it. It wants to be fun and nice, but it isn’t. Their script goes the usual route at the end with these kind of comedies of bottling out and showing that everyone is basically nice, and also going out with a song to try to send the audience home happy. It doesn’t even stick with the courage of its convictions that 11-year-olds are potty-mouthed, sex-obsessed little monsters.

Brady Noon’s Thor is teased relentlessly for not being manly enough, and wants to be a singer, an ambition which he has to abandon temporarily through peer pressure. But at the end he is singing in Eighties makeup on stage in a show. True to himself, gay presumably. Tremblay’s Max turns out to be a real red-blooded, randy boy though, a total womaniser. Williams’s Lucas is the nice peace-maker. At the curtain call, Max tells Thor that girls may come between them, their gang is basically bust up, but they will be friends for ever at the important times. I guess weddings and funerals then.

Despite its 15 certificate, there will be a rush by 11-year-old kids to see this movie of course. Are these boys Max, Lucas and Thor good role models? What are Molly Gordon and Midori Francis’s drug-taking older girls Hannah and Lily up to? Are these girls good role models?

The film promotes the use of drugs and sex toys, and bad, anti-social behaviour for 11-year-olds. Yet it definitely sees the three heroes as Good Boys. Jussayin.

© Derek Winnert 2019 Movie Review

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com