“Good Boys” is a new coming of age comedy starring Jacob Tremblay & newcomers Brady Noon & Keith L. Williams. It focuses on the three young boys as they begin the sixth grade and go through that adolescent stage of developing crushes on girls, discovering porn, trying to become popular amongst the sixth grade class, and make new friends… cooler ones, because these three are considered nerds.
They call themselves the “bean bag boys,” & in the beginning of the film Tremblay’s character, named Max, gets invited to a kissing party by the most popular kid in their school. Of course he and the rest of the bean bag boys jump at this opportunity, it’s a chance to finally get in with the cooler kids. They plan on going to the party, but they must first learn how to kiss in order to avoid embarrassment once they arrive at a party that’s going to consist of kissing. They use a drone that belongs to Max’s dad to spy on the neighbor and her boyfriend to see how they kiss. Things go awry, and now the film is also dedicated to the bean bag boys helping Max get his dad’s drone back before he realizes it’s gone.
It’s the typical comedy plot where the primary characters have a place that they need to get to, but they must first complete something very important in order to get to their destination… & if their task isn’t complete within a certain time frame, which it usually isn’t, then they may end up either arguing and splitting up, only to rejoin again towards the end of the film or they may just give up on their mission entirely, only to change their minds towards the end of the film. In a nutshell, the concept of this film is repetitive, but the film itself was slightly enjoyable. The writing is consistent & the story flows the way it’s supposed to, however the script was very predictable. There were moments where I knew what the outcome of a scene would be before it even happened.
Jacob Tremblay delivers the best performance, he single handedly carried every scene that he was in. Williams & Noon do good as well, but if it weren’t for Tremblay the bean bag boys would be almost unbearable to watch. However, each of the boys do a great job at portraying the typical naive preteen boy who’s completely clueless when it comes to sex, girls, and pretty much life in general. The rest of the kids in the movie were terrible actors, it was almost as if the director just told them to “do their best” & their best just wasn’t good enough. One of the young actresses probably didn’t even audition for the film, they most likely pulled her from some random after-school program and said “hey you! Do you want to be in a movie?” & she agreed, having no experience or talent within acting whatsoever. Her character appearances were painfully awkward every single time.
There were a few raunchy scenes, a lot of profanity, & the comedy was cheesy at times. There is nothing memorable about this movie, no funny catchphrases, occasional bland dialogue, & there were a few scenes where the performances from some of the young actors was so cringeworthy that I was desperately waiting for the next scene to come on. The ending of the film begins to drag as well, & it finally ends with the boys discovering what a certain sexual object is used for… which made for a funny ending.
If you’re into comedies where kids are using excessive profanity and occasionally doing dumb shit, then this movie is for you. It’s not bad, it’s just not great.
Final Rating – 5/10
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