Good Boys Is A Hilarious New Comedy, But Not For Kids

By Ryan Grow | August 23, 2019

Good Boys takes one of the most popular subgenres, a coming-of-age story, and gives it an interesting twist. 

Invited to his first kissing party, 12-year-old Max (Jacob Tremblay) asks his best friends Lucas (Keith L. Williams)  and Thor (Brady Noon) for some much-needed help on how to pucker up, having never kissed a girl. When they hit a dead-end, Max decides to use his father’s drone to spy on the teenage girls next door. After losing the drone, the boys decide to skip school and hatch a plan to retrieve it before Max’s dad can figure out what happened.

How this film changes the subgenre is that the kids are really young, so they are even more clueless than films like Superbad and The To-Do List. This might make some people uncomfortable, but behind all of that, the film finds the humor of it. Seeing a 12-year-old-boy practicing kissing on a CPR doll, which is actually a sex doll, is charmingly dorky especially when the boy’s post-kiss response is that the thing’s mouth is “sticky”? Some might stay and laugh or walk out of the theater. I stayed and laughed because it was hilarious. 

The whole story takes place over the course of one day, as the boys – who call themselves “the Beanbag Boys” – need to gain some experience before the “kissing party”. Some might find this dumb, but thanks to director Gene Stupnitsky’s careful directing style, you can easily buy this plot during the movie. Part of the fun of the film is seeing the actor’s hatch a plan that is so dumb, you can just guess how things will unravel and then enjoy the outcome. 

The laughs are not forced, but the movie gets funnier, if not sadder in a way when the jokes play into what is going on in the kids’ lives. When Lucas tells his friends his parents are splitting up, Thor bluntly asks, “So, what did you do?” It’s kind of that dreadful question that is all too familiar with, but the film executed these jokes in a way that is tastefully funny and not too hurtful. Tremblay, Noon, and Williams have amazing chemistry with each other which also helps sell this movie. Good Boys knows how to make you laugh because it relates to how we once were as kids.

Critic Rating: 4.5/5 stars

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