Good Boys

F-Bombs (Out of the Mouths of Babes)
or
"Two Weeks in the 6th Grade and I'm a Social Piranha!"

The "R" rating is prominent in the promotions for Good Boys because, God forbid, kids the ages of the stars of it should go see this movie (at the premieres, do they escort them out? I mean, they ACTED the damn thing). But, then, I'm not sure what good it would do to actually let 11-12 year old's see this movie, other than to show them what adults think of them.

Because the movie isn't FOR the age-group it depicts, like a YAF novel. It's for adults to give them a nostalgic laff about the naivete and confusion of that time period between childhood and wanting to be an adult—you realize you can't do certain things adults can do, you're constantly told "you wouldn't understand," you see adulthood as a freedom you covet without realizing the responsibilities that come with it (that give you no freedom at all). It's the last flush of childhood that you can actually enjoy before the mantle of licenses, financial responsibilities and permanent records take away your childhood and make you nostalgic for the way things were.

Which is why they make movies like Good Boys for adults.

There's a grand tradition of this in the movies—"Our Gang," one of my faves The Sandlot ("You're killing me, Smalls"), where kids are trying to act like adults in an adult world, where the adults are almost absent (the comic strip "Peanuts" is like this where there are no adults and the kids talk—as cartoonist Al Capp used to carp—"like psychiatrists" or, as in the animated versions, adults squawk like muted trumpets). If it was a drama, it would be To Kill a Mockingbird—kids not understanding the frailties and failings of adults. But, in a comedy, it's kids trying to negotiate through the adult world without understanding it, and Good Boys takes it to the extreme.

The story follows the issues of "The Beanbag Boys" (called that because...they all have beanbag chairs)—Max (Jacob Trembley, the brilliant young actor from Room), Lucas (Keith L. Williams, who's hilarious) and Thor (Brady Noon, who gives the most mannered performance, but has the most conflicted role)—friends since kindergarten, who are entering sixth grade, which for them is a highly transitional time. Their little clique runs the risk of fraying due to peer pressure, family crises, and the inevitable consequences of growing up and away from each other, but seem determined to stay bonded through thick and thin.

Thor is the most theatrical, but also the one most susceptible to peer pressure—despite his talents, he doesn't try out for the sixth grade school play because he'd be thought of "not cool." Max is starting to notice girls, particularly Brixlee (Millie Davis), who he can't look in the eye while also trying to be apathetic, at the same time the sight of her makes him weak in the knees. Lucas, is the tallest of the three, but is being cut down to size due to the impending divorce of his parents. These are the crises of children, because their stasis is being shattered and change is being forced on them without any regard to how they feel about it. They are completely messed up, but try to hide it behind a veneer of "cool" lest they humiliate themselves.

The events of the movie revolve around Max and his Brixlee fixation. The popular boys are giving them a hard time--Thor is being harassed  for his interest in theater arts, conflicting with Max, who wants to be popular because he thinks it will give him a better chance with Brixlee (an invitation to a "kissing party" That Brixlee is going to becomes his obsession). Big problem, though;  he's never kissed anybody. What if his kissing...well...sucks. To get an education--a horrifying encounter with porn doesn't work because "they never kiss, not their mouths"--Max takes control of his father's drone against his orders ("I use it for work!") to spy on two "old" girls, Hannah (Molly Gordon) and Lily (Midori Francis) in Hannah's nearby backyard. Hannah has a college boyfriend, so the boys "one-up" the traditional spying through the fence to go to aerial reconnaissance. They watch Hannah and Benji--the boyfriend--have a fight right after he delivers some "Molly" to Hannah for a concert that night. Just when the girls go in for a consoling clinch, Max loses control of the droid, allowing the girls to capture it...and hold it hostage.

This is not good. It becomes a hostage situation that goes seriously wrong with a confrontation where Max may have to 'fess up to his Dad and be grounded for the kissing party. But, Thor manages to steal one of the girls' gotcha bags containing the ecstasy (don't worry, the boys don't get access to it--they can't figure out child-proof caps). But, it begins a cat-and-mouse game between the Beanbag Boys and the "old girls" as each has something the other wants. There are the inevitable complications that divert this "Coming of Age" movie into an "Incredible Mess" movie (the kind where relatively simple goals become increasingly out-of-reach by increasing road-blocks, tangents and diverting sub-goals that keep the ultimate goal tantalizingly harder to achieve.

"Honey...yeah...we're not having kids."

The Beanbag Boys turn out to be surprisingly adept at navigating these smaller complications to achieve their ends, even as they risk fraying the fabric that binds them together.

They're not bad kids--in fact, their naivete and embedded anti-drug indoctrination makes them quite charming, despite the beer-sipping (four sips is a crowd-impressing record) and the F-bombs that explode out of their mouths.

They're just trying to make sense of a bizarre adult world that, more often than not, turns them into screaming meemies (and cry-babies--they are constantly crossing the line from sixth grade sophisticates to the behavior of kids in single digits). I'm not sure what kids would make of this if they were allowed to ss it (for one thing, a lot of the jokes will fly right over their heads). But, then, they're not the target audience. Older teens and adults are, and in that context, the movie is a nostalgic comedy as opposed to being about the loss of whatever innocence they still retain.

It's an odd movie. But very funny.