Good Boys Parent Guide

Max (Jacob Tremblay) and his two best friends Thor (Brady Noon) and Lucas (Keith L. Williams) have just moved onto the sixth grade, which launches them into middle school. This new world beckons with exciting adventures, including setting records for sips of beer (which stands at three) and attending kissing parties. That is, if they can figure out how to kiss, where to get beer, and how to get Max’s dad’s drone back from the neighbor girls who kidnapped it as the boys spied on them.

One of the first things to understand about this movie is that, despite the age of the cast and the story, this is not a film geared at (or appropriate for) young teenagers. The intent of this film, I think, is to appeal to an adult sense of nostalgia – for a simpler time before we had to have a job or even understand trigonometry. Sixth grade is sort of the end of childhood proper, and this film is trying to net viewers who are long past that and well into adulthood who want to look back at how uncomplicated things were, especially when they didn’t understand anything going on around them.

That said, it’s deeply unsettling to watch eleven-year-olds running around with sex toys, buying drugs, watching porn, and drinking beer. The swearing is more or less realistic for some eleven year olds, although it might be unappealing for most audiences. On the other hand, the constant sexual references are really heavy handed for the sixth grade. I don’t remember hearing most of that stuff till at least grade nine, but maybe that was just my school. At any rate, it’s not especially nostalgic to watch. Just…unpleasant.

Beyond parental concerns, this movie’s biggest problem at the box office is probably going to be that it’s not actually amusing. Aside from a few scenes of physical comedy, and a couple of visual gags, most of the intended humor just isn’t funny enough to earn any laughter from the audience. A quiet theater is a bad sign for a comedy, and apart from those few exceptions, you could have slept in the screening I attended. Whether it loses butts-in-seats due to the creepy combination of mature subject and young cast or for its more general failure as a comedy is an open question. Either way, I can’t imagine this performing too well.

I can’t really think of anyone who would want to see this flick, but there are lots of people who should, under no circumstances, ever see it. The Restricted rating is well earned and children should not see Good Boys. Nor should anyone else who isn’t charmed by the idea of watching eleven year olds behave like it’s hazing week at a frat house. I suppose the movie’s best feature its brevity- clocking it at 89 minutes, Good Boys may offend you a lot, but it won’t be for long. It’ll just feel that way.