Incoming

Four friends are starting high school. Misadventures begin. This is written and directed by Dave Chernin and John Chernin. The brothers are probably the most important people in this project. They did some Sunny in Philadelphia and co-created The Mick. That's why they got Kaitlin Olson. They seem to be going for Superbad and Project X. It's nowhere near as good as Superbad. Mostly, I don't love the four boys, but they are young enough to play high schoolers. It is odd that they are all going with older ladies. The lead coupling is cute and that's most appealing story. Benji should do his singing with all the marker marks on his face. That would be funnier. The movie is fine, but it's always a little less than optimal. The creepy kid has a creepy encounter. I would have paired him up with someone scary and scared him straight and maybe she could protect him from the older brother. Again, that would be funnier. The two spares has a surprisingly PG time with the school hottie. I'm not a fan of poop jokes and her poop looks like mustard. The general idea of this movie is fine, but I would modify some of this. I appreciate what Cannavale is trying to do, but his character needs to be a socially-awkward science nerd and I don't buy him in that. This movie has its moments.

We've seen this story play out multiple times , nerdy dude goes after this hot older girl and his friends have a whole other side quest. It really is just like Superbad, not another teen movie just not as good. The comedy honestly wasn't as good as I was hoping it would be , but the drama/heart was better then I was expecting.

There was some moments that made me laugh tho , mainly with the character named Ruby, but most of the jokes were just cringe and corny (like the diarrhea scenes, I just never found poop jokes funny tho). Outside of a few , like the teacher , the main character Benj, and Ruby the acting isn't that good . The actual party tho was kinda boring too

There's moments of this movie showing some heart that I really liked it's just their cut too short because of a joke , the chemistry is actually decent too .Like it felt believable that they were friends . Mason Thames (Benj) and Isabella Ferreira (Bailey) had the best chemistry out of everyone in this movie . I also do like how most of the characters actually look like high schoolers too , most movies like this will have some 20-30 year olds playing high schoolers and just to me usually takes me out of the scenes/movie a bit. Having them be played by actual teenagers is a nice touch there personally cause it's ofc believable their actual teenagers instead of 30 year old grown men

The first abt 40 minutes of the movie weren't good , but once the movie starts showing some heart it gets a lot better.

Plot

Four freshmen navigate the terrors of adolescence at their first-ever high school party.

Cast

Mason "The Black Phone" Thames arguably leads and flanked by the likes of veteran Bobby Cannavale who is on incredible form here! Always Sunny star Kaitlin Olson and a bunch of kids I'm not familiar with though deliver for the most part especially Isabella Ferreira.

Verdict

In a rare decision to watch something that's not a horror movie I picked Incoming for movie night and figured based on the description it would be something in the vein of Good Boys (2019) which I enjoyed considerably more than I expected. Well, I was right even though it's not on quite the same level.

Putting kids into the same adult situations while telling a bit of a goofy coming of age story Incoming delivers the laughs, an element of gross out humor, some touching moments and a mostly decent cast.

The older I get the harder I am to please but especially harder to make laugh and that's why I seem to have distanced myself from the entire comedy genre, thankfully Incoming renewed my faith a bit. It's hardly art, but it provides giggles and sometimes that's all we need.

Rants

The US movies always present a very different world than in the UK. When I was a kid there were no "First high school parties", house parties on the scale of these movies simply weren't a thing and you know what else wasn't? Proms! The UK isn't known for that, sure there are some these days but I never got to experience that. On the flipside at least my high school experience involved zero fear of being shot, so there's that.

The Good

Cast deliver Isabella Ferreira and Bobby Cannavale were great Some genuinely funny moments

The Bad

Bit cliched in places Not convinced by that final scene Kaitlin Olson.

This movie comes across as every 80s movie wrapped into one and not in a good way. If you grew up with the 80s movies or have made your way through them watching with your parents one evening when they were feeling nostalgic, you'll be able to pick out bits and pieces from every single one of them. Mesh them all together and you end up with this copy-cat. Nothing original and a less than exciting music score. On the other hand, it would make a great series for pre-teens and middle-schoolers who have yet to experience what high school is really like. Maybe Netflix was testing the water with this on. Go ahead. It'll probably be popular with Gen Alpha. Everybody likes to say they are like Gen X anyway.

It was an okay movie I was bored this morning so I started watching it. Fun and cringe and weird all at the same time great twist and turns not what I was expecting if they took the teacher out the party scenes my score of the movie would improve. Decent ending feels like an epsidode of a show. If they decide to make a sequel maybe the ending could work and the sequel could start at the beginning of the sophomore year , the ending would have been better if she had said yes and they walked off together, some parts were funny and cringe , less cursing would have made the movie a lot better. An advise to the directors next time if you are going to make a highschool movie get dialog/ input from actual highschoolers I like it but it felt forced.