REVIEW: ‘Good Boys’ had Heart and a Massive Amount of Raunchy Humor

Growing up is a frightening prospect. Your body changes, you have strange feelings you can’t explain, and you would do anything to be considered one of the “cool kids.” Good Boys, directed by Gene Stupnitsky (Bad Teacher, Year One) and produced by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg (This Is The End, Superbad, The Boys) tackles these issues with a fair amount of heart and a massive amount of raunchy humor.

The film follows best friends Max (Jacob Tremblay), Lucas (Keith L. Williams) and Thor (Brady Noon) who have dubbed themselves the “Bean Bag Boys.” As the Boys enter sixth grade, adolescence hits them with the force of a runaway train. Lucas learns that his parents are getting a divorce and Thor is ridiculed by the popular kids for pursuing a role in the school musical and failing to drink a beer.

Good Boys kicks into motion when Max is invited to a “kissing party,”  a party where their school’s popular kids practice “French Kissing.” Although he leaps at the chance because his longtime crush Brixley will be there, he has no idea how to kiss a girl. Chaos ensues as the boys try to learn everything they can about girls, including a runaway drone, mistaking sex toys for weapons, trying to cross the freeway, and buying drugs from a frat house.

The marketing for Good Boys emphasized Rogen and Goldberg’s producing roles, and that is a bit of a double-edged sword.  While the film is full of Supintsky, Rogen, and Goldberg’s trademark sophomoric humor, the film often feels like the junior version of Superbad as both movies deal with young men trying to attend a party and dealing with the twin pitfalls of growing up and their changing friendship.

The similarities don’t stop there. There’s a scene where Thor tries to sneak a beer past a cop by stuffing it down his pants. Watching the scene, I thought “Didn’t this happen with McLovin in Superbad?” It’s perfectly fine for a filmmaker to reference a previous work of theirs or use similar plot points for different films, but you have to be careful with how much you lift or otherwise you’ll make your audience wish they were watching the movie you’re trying to emulate.

Even with those similarities, the movie still manages to be an insanely entertaining romp. Most of this falls on the shoulders of Tremblay, Williams, and Noon as the trio possesses immense chemistry which leads to several hilarious sequences. Max pulls a paintball gun on a group of college kids who are twice his size, Lucas accidentally launches himself into the side of an armored truck, dislocating his arm, and Thor digs up his father’s anatomically correct sex doll – which they believe to be a CPR dummy – so that the boys can practice kissing. The major novelty of this film is seeing twelve-year-old boys engage in the raunchy behavior that usually populates older teenage-led films or adult comedies, and Tremblay, Williams, and Noon rise to the challenge.

Their chemistry also leads to some heartfelt scenes, as Thor’s desire to be popular and Max’s desire to attend the “kissing party” puts a strain on their friendship and increases Lucas’ fear that he will lose his friends in addition to his parents. Some of the best comedies have heartwrenching as well as hilarious moments, and Good Boys is no exception.

Even though it may remind you of Superbad and Booksmart, Good Boys is a hilarious, heartfelt comedy that succeeds due to the chemistry between its three leads.

Bad Boys is playing in theaters nationwide.