Movie Review: The "Good Boys" Must Be Protected at All Costs

If we can’t have a prequel to Superbad, we’ll settle for Good Boys.

Finally, a film for the boys. jk. Most films are for the boys. But this one is specifically for the good boys, which I suppose is why they called it that.

It stars Jacob Tremblay (from Room), Keith L. Williams and Brady Noon as the titular Good Boys: curse-flinging Year 6 students who are, nonetheless, total sweetie pies.

In 2019, it’s especially nice to enjoy a movie without wondering if the lead actors are about to be, or have already been, cancelled for their toxic masculinity. As a plus, the story is largely about them learning to respect women, one another’s feelings and themselves as they prepare to exit childhood. Its big "joke"—that it’s funny to simply watch these kids swear the darndest things—diminishes over time, and maybe that’s because the characters’ growth throughout the picture renders them mature-seeming. What never diminishes during the extremely good-natured Good Boys is your desire to see no harm come to these three young men. They must be protected at all costs.

Their director is Gene Stupnitsky, a writer from The Office who has some suspicious big-screen screenplay credits to his name, including Year One and Bad Teacher. At least you can’t accuse him of hiding behind uncrackable titles.

He’s teamed again with regular collaborator Lee Eisenberg for the script, yet you’d be forgiven for thinking it came from the pen of producer Seth Rogen, given it takes the format of Rogen’s Superbad, only with de-aged protagonists.

Instead of focusing on a trio of hypersexed 17-year-olds desperate to procure booze for a big, blow-out high school party, Good Boys centers on a trio of barely-pubescent tweens who face increasingly absurd obstacles that keep them from attending a "kissing party" in the basement of their grade’s coolest classmate.

The main instigator is teensy Max (Jacob Tremblay), who scored the coveted invite from cool cucumber Soren (Izaac Wang). This is Max’s big chance to pash on with the, ahem, love of his life, Brixlee (Millie Davis, introduced in slow-mo cleaning out her retainer) or, at the very least, finally make eye contact. Max convinces Soren to invite his besties—theatre-kid-posing-as-tough-guy Thor (Brady Noon) and the sensitive, playful Lucas (Keith L. Williams)—because they do everything together. That soon includes googling "Porb" to see what they're in for, spying on their neighbours (Molly Gordon, Midori Francis) to learn how to kiss, and, through a convoluted series of misunderstandings, going on the run with stolen molly and evading a disinterested cop (Sam Richardson). It’s like The Fugitive, but while Tommy Lee Jones once icily said "I don’t care," to Harrison Ford’s plight, this time, the police officer really doesn’t.

Good Boys truly holds the same exact shape of Superbad and the recent Booksmart, not to mention plenty of high school comedies that came before, Can’t Hardly Wait included. There are no unique twists in the script, except in the sense that the genre has gradually moved towards inclusiveness and away from homophobia and misogyny over the past two decades (Superbad crawled so that Good Boys and Booksmart could fly). The real appeal here is the younger stars. It’s not just that it’s amusing to watch them mistake adult toys for self-defence weapons. They have genuine chemistry and you believe their friendship, even though you know it is held tenuously together by their lack of life experience. The melancholy coda is a little more on the nose than the perfect, subtle, nose-booping finale to Superbad, but Tremblay, Noon and Williams sell the sincerity. I left Good Boys having had a good laugh, but also feeling like Adam Sandler in Billy Madison, wanting to grab them by the lapel and cry-whisper, "Cherish it."

3.5/5

Good Boys arrives in Australian cinemas 19 September. Rated MA15+ for strong crude sexual humour and coarse language.