Good Boys

Good Boys somehow manages to balance its risqué, scatological impulses with a surprisingly sweet, resonant coming-of-age tale.

Yes, it’s a raunchy, edgy, hard-R comedy about a trio of 12-year-old boys who drop the f-bomb every other sentence and get involved in all sorts of predicaments featuring sex toys and beer and molly — but even the most hardcore jokes have a good-natured and even sweet larger context.

Good Boys is worth catching for those rare and wrenching points at which emotional honesty breaks through.

Had the film not taken an introspective turn, I still would have appreciated its skill with generating easy laughs. Happily, Good Boys has a little more to recommend it than gross gags.

A well-cast coming-of-age story with a potty mouth, Good Boys certainly has its moments, but is overall pretty small fry, too reliant on recycling the same joke.

Gene Stupnitsky’s Good Boys is Big Mouth for those who prefer ribald humor about tweenage sexuality in live action, though it lacks the Netflix show’s frankness and authenticity.

The big problem of Good Boys is not that it’s harsh or nasty or outrageous or tasteless or shocking or appalling. The problem is that it’s none of those things, when it should have been all of those things. It’s safe and sentimental, with just a few mild laughs.

Hilarious from start to finish! And overall a very good movie as well with lots of ️

Its got a couple funny moments but the movie ends up being like every other middle schooler movie. Kinda let down since I thought it'd be different but nah

Has some funny moments, but in the end comes across as a poor man's Superbad.

This film offers a refreshing angle by showing the adventure through the eyes of young kids, and that part is genuinely cute. Unfortunately, the charm stops there. The comedy is mostly silly in a way that doesn’t land, making the whole thing feel pretty mediocre.There are one or two moments that manage to be funny, but beyond that it’s a lightweight experience that doesn’t leave much of an impression. Nice enough, but nothing more.

The infinite monkey theorem postulates that, over an infinite period of time, a monkey randomly hitting keys on a typewriter will eventually replicate the complete works of Shakespeare. “Good Boys,” apparently, was written by a one-handed simian using a typewriter with several missing keys. Invited to a kissing party that includes the cool kids from school, Max (actors’ names are withheld from this review, to protect the innocent) wants to learn how to pucker up. He decides to use his father’s drone to spy on some older girls in the neighborhood to gather the necessary information. When the drone goes missing, Max and his pals experience a frantic couple of days trying to replace the drone before Max’s dad finds out. In many ways, “Good Boys” is a youthful version of the film “Superbad,” with the handicap that it doesn’t have an older, more accomplished cast that can use its force of personality to make the holes in the script less obvious. As a result, “Good Boys” is itself superbad. The script for this film just seems lazy. Basically, it’s a two-note tune – 12 year olds dropping f-bombs at every opportunity while demonstrating they are completely interested in but completely clueless about anything having to do with sex. Whenever the writers don’t know what to do, expect an explosion of profanity and/or the appearance of a sex toy. (Admittedly, the appearance of “Dad’s CPR doll” was funny, the first couple of times.) Some critics have appreciated this film because of the juxtaposition of the crude humor with “sweet” moments when the three sixth graders briefly confront disappointment and the recognition that the texture of their lives is constantly changing. I disagree with this kind assessment, because none of the life lessons seem hard-earned. All the sweet moments rely on the protagonists reverting to child-like behavior, not any sense of forward movement, additional insight or personal growth. Ultimately, “Good Boys” feels like a comedy sketch much too short to support the weight of a full-length movie.