The thing about Good Boys that caught me off guard the most is how literal the title ended up being. Having seen the previews of the film over and over again, where the main pitch is seemingly just “kids swearing and getting themselves into trouble,” which honestly isn’t even that bad of a pitch to begin with. However, it paints a picture of the kind of characters you’ll be following, and one can’t help but see the “Good Boys” as just playful irony. It turns out, in what is probably the film’s smartest move, the good boys – Max (Jacob Tremblay), Lucas (Keith L. Williams), and Thor (Brady Noon), truly are good boys. They’re naïve and foul mouthed, but they are good, friendly, achingly earnest, but they do quickly fall victim to bad judgment.
That bad judgment manifests into a series of increasingly ridiculous events that sprung out of their desire to go to a popular kid’s house, which is holding a “kissing party” later that night. They don’t know how to kiss, so they thought to use a drone that belongs to Max’s dad (played by Will Forte), to spy on the teenage girl next door, Hannah (Molly Gordon). Unlucky for them, they get caught, one thing leads to another, they lose the drone, end up in possession of some drugs, and are now off to fix their mistakes, get the drone back by any means necessary, and get to the party where Max can kiss his crush.
On one level, the film, which is directed by Gene Stupnitsky, who also co-wrote it with his writing partner, Lee Eisenberg, delivers exactly what you would expect. With Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg serving as producers, you get an idea for the humor, which is typically raunchy, somewhat improvisational, and deals in a lot of wacky misadventures. One might fear that the whole gimmick of the kids constantly swearing would get one note pretty fast, but as far as I’m concerned, watching a kid swear is just objectively funny, and it never gets old. All the gags that are pulled from their naïveté and inexperience and desire to look cool land really hard, and they all come at a rapid pace, so even the lines that aren’t as funny are quickly forgotten about and a better one is just around the corner.
What surprised me about the film was how sweet it ended up being. It’s a genuinely compelling and heartfelt story about friendship, and a very particular, infrequently explored area of friendship. In the film, we’re cued in on the fact that despite the boys all have each other’s backs, their interests are starting to diverge. The idea that they would be friends forever is starting to be challenged, and they don’t understand how to process and deal with that. It leads to a number of affecting moments, and while the transition from wacky to sincere is often clunky as hell, once it settles into touching on this aspect of the story, it’s really effective.
A thing I’ve noticed in some raunchy comedies mostly since Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising is an increase in social awareness, which really came through more in films like Blockers and Booksmart. They are still raunchy, contain a lot of inappropriate language, sexual humor, insults, but there’s more attention paid to how the humor is framed and aimed. With Good Boys, the film establishes early on that the boys are very aware of the need for consent whenever they get the chance to kiss a girl. There are numerous moments throughout the film that seems to actively fight against the toxic tropes and punchlines you would normally see in a movie like this, and bring a progressive perspective that still feels true to these characters and the modern world in which they live without coming across as preachy or self-satisfied.
Good Boys was a pleasant surprise for me. Not because I thought it seemed bad, far from it, I thought it looked fun, but I didn’t expect the filmmakers to add these extra touches that allowed the film to stand apart from the mean-spirited exercises you would typically see in this genre. Of course, as you watch it, you don’t think so much about that stuff because you’re probably too busy laughing. The three leads are fantastic, bouncing off each other, and their older comedy veterans like they’ve been doing this forever, and they totally sell the bond between them. Stupnitsky is making his directorial debut here, and on that front, it’s solid. It’s got a lot of energy and momentum going for it, which – when combined with the endearing leads, and onslaught of hilarious gags – makes for one of the better comedies you’ll see this year.