August means back to school, so are you looking for a wild teen party flick for Labor Day weekend?
You might try the raunchy teen comedy “Incoming,” which is currently the No. 1 movie on Netflix.
It’s nothing we haven’t seen before in “Mean Girls” (2004) or “Superbad” (2007), but it’s not a total waste of time, either, with some refreshing Gen Z social updates between the potty humor.
Set near Los Angeles, the story follows four freshmen who navigate the nightmares of adolescence at their first-ever high school party. Benj Nielsen (Mason Thames) has a crush on his sophomore sister’s friend Bailey (Isabella Ferreira). When his jerk buddy Koosh (Bardia Seiri) announces that his older brother is throwing a kegger, Benj hopes for an invite along with his nerdy buddies Eddie (Ramon Reed) and Connor (Raphael Alejandro).
You could say the premise reflects the spirit of its creators who are “incoming freshmen” making their feature film debut, but writer/director brothers John and Dave Chernin have been around awhile, held back a few grades for pulling pranks in this analogy. The siblings wrote 10 episodes of FX’s hilarious sitcom “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” (2005-2012) before serving as show runners on their own Fox series “The Mick” (2017-2018).
They reunite with many of their same cast members for “Incoming,” namely Kaitlin Olson (Sweet Dee from “It’s Always Sunny” and Mickey in “The Mick”) as Benj’s mom, instructing him before the party and grounding him afterward. You’ll also see Scott MacArthur (Jimmy in “The Mick”) as Eddie’s wannabe stepdad driving a sports car and making backhanded compliments to Eddie, who tells him to “put some respect on my name.”
Still, the standout adult role belongs to Bobby Cannavale as Mr. Studebaker, the “cool” chemistry teacher creating chemical reactions in class who turns out to be stuck in his high school glory days. He’s just asking to get fired when he attends the teen party, staying for one drink, then another, then another. Before long, he’s making an ass out of himself and belligerently falling into the pool like Will Ferrell’s Frank the Tank in “Old School” (2003).
Beyond the adult antics, the film really belongs to its teen cast, led by lead actor Mason Thames, who recently starred in Scott Derrickson’s underrated horror flick “The Black Phone” (2021) in which he played a young boy abducted by Ethan Hawke only to receive supernatural phone calls from past victims trying to help him escape. I highly recommend it for Halloween, especially since Thames will soon return for “The Black Phone 2” (2025).
In “Incoming,” he carries the movie as the good-hearted Benj, who is easy to root for because he is a kind soul. He’s at once nervous to talk to his crush, but also quick on his feet to make clever comebacks whenever he puts his foot in his mouth. Of course, no one is perfect, so like any good movie character, he will have to work through his flaws to see if he can redeem himself like Heath Ledger singing on the bleachers in “10 Things I Hate About You” (1999).
His polite demeanor is the opposite of his older sister Alyssa (Ali Gallo), who gets a nose job in high school because her character arc is realizing that she’s uglier on the inside than she could ever be on the outside — making rude comments and bullying classmates in the hallway. Luckily for Benj, Alyssa’s friend Bailey doesn’t share this “mean girl” behavior. She’s actually open to talking with him in the kitchen — and maybe more if Benj plays his cards right.
As for Ben’s trio of awkward friends, Koosh is the most “cringey,” inventing an elaborate scheme to score with a girl, any girl, scouting the field on home security cameras and tricking them to enter his parents’ basement spa where he just happens to “lock” the door in time for a massage and dip in the hot tub. Don’t worry, ladies, he gets his comeuppance, teaching young viewers that it never pays to be a predatory ick boy, so don’t start in high school.
Far more sympathetic are the dorky duo of Eddie (Ramon Reed), who would rather play video games, and Connor (Raphael Alejandro), whose voice cracks in puberty. Their subplot of escorting the school’s popular girl Katrina (Loren Gray) on a drunken trip to Taco Bell basically becomes the plot of the Sundance hit “Emergency” (2022), where two dudes escorted a passed-out party girl whose worried sister was played by that Sabrina Carpenter.
In the grand scheme, there have been so many teen movies over the past 50 years that it’s hard to top “American Graffiti” (1973), “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” (1982), “The Breakfast Club” (1985), “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” (1986), “Dazed and Confused” (1993), “Clueless” (1995), “American Pie” (1999), “Mean Girls” (2004), “Superbad” (2007), “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” (2012), “The Spectacular Now” (2013) and “Boyhood” (2014).
Over the past decade, my coming-of-age Mount Rushmore features Greta Gerwig’s “Lady Bird” (2017), Bo Burnham’s “Eighth Grade” (2018) and two by Kelly Fremon Craig: “Edge of Seventeen” (2016) and “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret” (2023). Some might include Olivia Wilde’s “Booksmart” (2019), but it doesn’t crack my list.
In the end, “Incoming” will probably be “outgoing,” barely remembered in our collective consciousness due to familiar gags, drug detours, potty humor and annoying but realistic teenage profanity. Still, it’s refreshing to see three of the four male characters displaying “green flag” energy in 2024, moving away from the frat-boy humor of Hollywood’s troubled past to raise a generation that’s more respectful to women in between the jokes.
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