| Perhaps I’m aging out of these movies, but I also think the filmmakers have aged out of these movies. Incoming is like 40-year-old men trying to act and sound like high school kids. They seem to have picked up as much lingo as they could from Gen Z on social media and then completed the movie borrowing from Gen X peers. The result is a high school party that doesn’t fit any decade. | | 2024
Directed by: Dave Chernin, John Chernin
Screenplay by: Dave Chernin, John Chernin
Starring: Mason Thames, Isabella Ferreira, Ali Gallo and Bobby Cannavale
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The biggest clue that the filmmakers have aged past a high school movie is that the best character, by a mile, is Bobby Cannavale as Mr. Studebaker. A cool chemistry teacher who parties with his students, which means, he is literally a middle-aged man attending high school kids’ parties. It’s a fantastic character, played perfectly by Cannavale stealing every single scene he’s in, but he’s also a character that belongs in a much better movie than whatever this is. Somebody should make a movie that looks like it’s supposed to be a high school party movie but then slowly shift focus to the cool teacher who starts realizing that he’s actually that tragic figure they should be avoiding.
The beginning of the movie is the worst part and the hardest to get through. It’s filled with teenage boy hormones – loud, obnoxious, false bravado put on by some of the most annoying kids this genre has ever seen (and this genre is famous for annoying teenage boys). We have a quartet of boys all trying to act cooler than they are, but their pitifulness is not redeeming, it’s just painful.
Things get better when the movie tries to focus on our lead boy – Mason Thames as Benj – he likes a girl, but is super awkward around her and he tries to be the relaxed friend who is accepting of everyone’s choices. He’s too mature for this movie, but he’s also the one kid who makes it watchable. When the movie focuses on his unpleasant friends instead it just becomes a chaotic mess.
Supporting characters include Benj’s sister Alyssa (Ali Gallo), a looks-obsessed lesbian who hates her brother and her mother and her ex-girlfriend but eventually realizes that she’s problem. Another solid character but this movie isn’t about her. Kaitlin Olson shows up for two scenes as Benj’s and Alyssa’s mother, and I was expecting to love her as much as Bobby Cannavale, but she spent her one notable scene swearing at her kids as if it was hilarious. It’s not offensive, but it’s also not funny.
At the school assembly after the fateful, but also overly stupid, party, Benj sings “Signed, Sealed, Delivered” to try to win over the heart of his crush. When that unsurprisingly fails, one has to wonder if it was because a 14-year-old boy was singing a song that is decades way too old for him. I’m sorry, but high school freshmen in the year 2024 who also pose as part-time drug dealers, don’t roll around town listening to Stevie Wonder. But 40-year-old men might.
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