Good Boys (2019)

Good Boys arrives with a premise that could have been engineered in a lab for maximum discomfort: three sixth graders, one stolen drone, a handful of ecstasy, and a party they were not invited to. Gene Stupnitsky directs his debut with the polish of a studio craftsman, and Seth Rogen's Point Grey imprint supplies the usual battery of profanity. The result is a comedy that performs its cultural bookkeeping quietly, almost apologetically, and then returns to the business of children saying terrible things to one another.

The casting is more integrated than the genre typically bothers to attempt. Keith L. Williams is a genuine co-lead, not a decoration, and Asian performers fill supporting roles without the film ever pausing to applaud itself. None of this is framed as an argument. Lucas happens to be Black; the script shows no interest in making that a subject, so the racial dimension stays dormant. The female characters, chiefly Molly Gordon's Hannah and Midori Francis's Lily, are granted some bite and some agency, though the movie stays exactly what it is: a boys' story about boys learning to be marginally less awful. There is no thesis here, only casting.

Where the film does betray a faint instructional instinct is in the boys' horrified discovery of sexual assault, a beat that lands with a sincerity briefly unhooking the comedy, and in the tidy, gently moralizing close about friendship and growing up. These moments arrive through jokes, which keeps any sermon mercifully short. The remainder is an amiable, well-made R-rated lark with a soft heart and almost no agenda to speak of, and it topped the domestic box office on its opening weekend regardless.