Invited to his first kissing party, 12-year-old Max asks his best friends Lucas and Thor for some much-needed help on how to pucker up. When they hit a dead-end, Max decides to use his father's drone to spy on the teenage girls next door. When the boys lose the drone, they skip school and hatch a plan to retrieve it before Max's dad can figure out what happened.
You don't need a reviewer to see from the trailers that Good Boys is a bit like watching a live-action South Park, or a prequel to Superbad. The entire humour of the film revolves around the inconsistent knowledge gaps that these tweens have regarding more mature topics. Where Superbad had protagonists trying to get laid, Good Boys has that younger age range trying to get that first kiss. It's the absurdity of the premise that really helps bring the humour to the table; the fact that it's a coming-of-age story about sixth-graders starting middle school (that 11-12 age range that translates to Year 7, or starting intermediate in New Zealand), but that age range is unable to watch the film (luckily it's only R13 in NZ).
The entire film revolves around one boy wanting to achieve his first kiss with a girl he likes, but not knowing how to kiss. It's such a basic premise, and yet the situation devolves very quickly from innocent naivety to over-the-top raunchiness. To the credit of the script, an effort has been made to keep as much of the humour related to that want of a physical connection. Watching three young boys blissful ignorance around the details of feminine hygiene products, toys, dolls, and other accessories creates a good amount of laughs from the audience. The humour is hit-and-miss though; and while it works well when it hits, when it misses, the silence in the theatre is cringe-worthy.
Our three main protagonists work really well together and put forth three distinct personality types. You have Max, the charmer, who is interested in girls (portrayed by Jacob Tremblay), Lucas, the rule-following, lawful good boy (portrayed by Keith L. Williams), and Thor, the one that talks a big game, and will do anything to fit in (portrayed by Brady Noon). Their different personalities create a good level of humour, as well as forming a source of conflict.
Each of the three protagonists has their own story arc, which leads to one of the negative aspects of the film; the third act. As the film progresses, events transpire and accelerate, culminating in a great, albeit excessive, frat house scene. Unfortunately, the rest of the film goes downhill as everything takes a serious turn and all three character arcs are forced through to fruition, no matter how it affects the pacing. It's as if the writers--Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky--had no idea how to organically bring the story to a satisfying end, and after finishing the film, tacked on another end to fix it, then tacked on a third one to pad the runtime further...
From about halfway through the 90-minute runtime, the film does introduce a theme of accepting the dynamic nature of friendships as one changes through life experiences. Again though, the majority of this is crammed into the tail end of the film.
Altogether, Good Boys manages to put forward a good balance between story and comedy, with much of the successful execution coming from the performances coming from Tremblay, Williams, and Noon. There is the topic of consent, that is stressed almost too much, despite how inconsistent it was with the boys' knowledge level, but I guess that is a sign of the times where the film must place emphasis on such an issue to prevent backlash.
Good Boys is quirky, unadulterated fun. Even with such a basic premise and a sloppy third act, there are more than enough laughs to warrant checking this one out.