Cinematic Spillover: Short Reviews of Good Boys, Gwen and The Amazing Johnathan
No movie with this many dick jokes has any business being this funny. That said, Good Boys is just that – an obscenity-laced comedy with just the right combination of audacious humor and heart that will win over adults who don’t mind hearing 6th graders drop F-bombs. Sure, you won’t see evangelicals get on board for the R-rated raunchfest, but without the script featuring the phrase, “Grab them by the pussy,†is that really a surprise? Taking a few pages from its most obvious cinematic inspiration, the 2007 comedy Superbad, Good Boys is just as side-splitting hilarious and a lot more adorable – like the Little Rascals if the Little Rascals wielded dildos and shot people in the face with paintballs. The film stars Jacob Tremblay (Room), Keith L. Williams (TV’s The Last Man on Earth) and Brady Noon (TV’s Boardwalk Empire) as best friends Max, Lucas and Thor. When Max gets invited to a “kissing party,†he makes it his mission to go, so he can kiss the girl of his dreams. But when the boys accidentally lose Max’s father’s expensive drone and then unknowingly steal a bunch of ecstasy pills from a couple of high school girls, their afternoon turns into a race to put everything back to normal before they get grounded for life. Co-written by Lee Eisenberg (Year One) and Gene Stupnitsky (Bad Teacher), who also makes his directorial debut, Good Boys works because of its incredibly likeable trio of tweens who are actually really sweet characters. If Max, Lucas and Thor were mean-spirited little punks, this would be an entirely different movie. Luckily for audiences, even with a few lowbrow jokes that don’t register as much as others, Good Boys earns high marks. Good Boys opens nationwide August 16. Grade: B+