Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Jacob Tremblay, Keith L. Williams, Brady Noon, Molly Gordon, Midori Francis, Izaac Wang, Millie Davis, Josh Caras, Will Forte, Mariessa Portlance, Lil Rel Howery, Retta, Michaela Watkins, Stephen Merchant, Christian Darrel Scott, Macie Juiles, Chance Hurstfield, Enid-Raye Adams, Craig Haas, Benita Ha, Alexander Calvert.
It is in the naivety and innocence of the young that we perhaps see the wisdom to come, and nothing really touches the experience of the one to whom youthful embarrassment and exuberance has been visited upon, for in that moment comes learning, of realisation that you cannot remain a child, or even a teenager, forever.
Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky’s look at how the pre-teen world in modern day America is one that is both heart-warming and full of empathy for the situations they are bound to, the loss of innocence, the realisation that your parents are just as infallible as you. In the end, you move on because you must, friendships endure and memories remain but in the end all must pass and in such times comes the most valuable of lessons, keep hold of who makes you laugh.
Good Boys comes out of a simpler, and more progressive place than the films which once inhabited the ideal of comedy with sexual gullibility and reckoning attached to them, a genuine pleasure when compared to the likes of Porky’s or Animal House, and yet above all this, the film, when looked through the eyes of modern nostalgia, is not one for the kids, it is a reminder to the adults in their lives to cut some slack when either mollycoddling or taking to task their offspring for the mistakes they make whilst growing up.
It is in this arena that the cast thrives and excels, notably Jacob Tremblay as Max, Keith L. Williams as Lucas, Brady Noon as Thor, Molly Gordon as Hannah and Izaac Wang as Soren, a set of what could be seen as convoluted moves to each point in the story is swiftly and determinedly given freedom to breathe and bring the humour of each moment out further than might have been expected.
A fearless insight into the world of the pre-teen, one obsessed with escaping a certain position in society, but all too soon immersed into an area that they cannot understand; Good Boys is a film filled with good intentions and one that does not let itself down in the approach or the application in its pursuit of comedy.
Ian D. Hall