Review: "Good Boys"

Just a quick mini-review today. Head over to The Film Yap to read Manuel Fernandez' "official" take on the comedy.

This struck me as a pretty conscious attempt to do "Superbad" for the tween crowd -- the running joke being that 12-year-olds want to be outrageous and grown-up but are still too kiddie to know how to do it right. And, of course, we've got to do some sober life-lessons moments.

The end result plays like a bawdy comedy version of "Stand By Me." There are a few good laughs, and I enjoyed Jacob Tremblay as the quasi-leader of the trio of kids who dub themselves "The Bean Bag Boys."

(Why? Because they met in kindergarten and there were some bean bags lying around.)

The setup is that they ditch school, accidentally find themselves in possession of some Molly (aka Ecstasy, or as they refer to it, a "sex drug") and destroy an expensive drone that belongs to one of their fathers (Will Forte). So the rest of the movie is spent trying to fix what they screwed up in the first act.

The boys are each a "type." Tremblay is Max, a young heartbreaker who's obsessed with his classmate Brixlee (Millie Davis), determined to kiss and then marry her, despite having never spoken to her.

Lucas (Keith L. Williams) is the bigger, older-looking kid who's actually the shyest and most sensitive of the troop. His parents are divorcing, and he's so honest and guileless that he keeps blurting out the truth, foiling the BBB's plans.

Brady Noon plays Thor, a talented singer who too often listens to the taunting of his bullying classmates, who dub him a "tryhard" for seeming like he cares too much about something. Heavens!

Molly Gordon and Midori Francis play the teen girls who are the main antagonists, swiping the drone that the boys were using to spy on them so they could learn how to kiss. There's a big party tonight at the house of Soren (Izaac Wang), the reigning king of cool, and word has it spin-the-bottle is on the menu.

Director Gene Stupnitsky ("Bad Teacher"), who co-wrote the script with Lee Eisenberg, has a good feel for what it's like to be 12 and wanting to grow up overnight. But the movie's main failing is repeating the same basic joke over and over again: the boys dropping a lot of f-bombs while being completely in the dark about the mechanics of sex.

For instance, we're supposed to believe that these lads have Googled the word "porn" for the very first time in the course of the story. And they keep mixing up terms like "feminist" and "misogyny" so they're basically interchangeable.

They have arguments about who's the nicest kid in their grade -- Lucas is affronted it's not him -- and play at being rebellious while fretting about their actions "going on our permanent record."

There's some good stuff in "Good Boys," but in the end I like the idea of the movie more than the one they made.

Video review: "Wonder"

“Wonder” is a tender-hearted flick that makes no bones about being a tearjerker. Julia Roberts and Owen Wilson star as the parents of Auggie, a 10-year-old boy played by Jacob Tremblay who was born with severe facial defects.

He’s been more or less hiding out his whole life, being home-schooled by his mom or wearing an astronaut’s helmet in public to ward off stares and comments. But now he’s attending school for the first time, and this is the story of his entering a broader, scarier world.

The screenplay by Steve Conrad, Jack Thorne and Stephen Chbosky, who also directed, is a straightforward string of encounters. We know the teasing and taunting is going to come, but it’s no less painful when it does. Auggie soon finds a friend in a scholarship student (Noah Jupe), but the inevitable setback is just around the corner. Mandy Patinkin plays the wise and helpful school headmaster.

The movie, based on the best-selling novel by R.J. Palacio, also follows around Auggie’s older sister, Via (Izabela Vidovic), for a bit, and we get to see the family dynamic from her perspective. She loves her little brother, but it’s hard to be teenager when your sibling soaks up all of the grownups’ attention.

It may not be the most original movie to come down the pike, but “Wonder” is decorated with nice, crisp performances and an authentic human story that’s hard to resist. Three hankies, at least.

Bonus features are quite good. The DVD edition has a feature-length commentary track by Chbosky and Palacio, music video for “Brand New Eyes” and a featurette on the soundtrack.

Upgrade to the Blu-ray version, and you add two more featurettes, “A Child’s Sense of Wonder” and “What a Wonderful World,” plus a five-part making of documentary titled, “Summer of Fun.”

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Review: "Wonder"

"Wonder" is an old-fashioned, straight up weepie. Tears will be jerked, you can be sure. I liked the fact that the movie is unambiguous about its intentions, and carries them through effectively without irony or coyness.

Jacob Tremblay, who was so amazing in "Room," plays Auggie Pullman, a boy of 10 born with severe facial defects. He's been through 27 surgeries -- his family displays the hospital wristbands as a collage -- and has been home-schooled all his life by his ferocious devoted mom, played by Julia Roberts. Now, as he enters 5th grade, it has been decided it's time for him to integrate into a regular school with other kids.

Well, sort of. In Hollywood parlance, a "regular school" is an exclusive New York City private institution, Beecher Prep, where families that live in multi-million-dollar brownstones pay something like the U.S. median household income to send their kids to rub elbows with the best of the best. But for the purposes of the story, which is based on the best-selling by R.J. Palacio, what's important is that he's around other children consistently for the first time in his life.

The underlying themes of the movie are bullying and otherness. Mom and dad (Owen Wilson) send Auggie to school with the full knowledge that he will be stared at and picked on. They figure it's something he's going to have to deal with sooner or later, and calculate he's reached a level of emotional stability to deal with it.

Also, there's a subplot about the mom wanting to complete her master's thesis that was put on hold a decade ago to be his full-time guardian and tutor. And, frankly, she rightly wants to reclaim a little piece of her own life. I admired that the filmmakers -- director Stephen Chbosky, who co-wrote the script with Steve Conrad and Jack Thorne -- included this dynamic.

I know it runs counter to commonly accepted precepts and hagiography about mothers, but I personally think it's unhealthy for parents to let their kids think they have nothing going in their lives beyond raising them. Part of being a role model is not being afraid to display ambition and individuality.

The makeup effects on Tremblay are very good, to the point I didn't recognize him until I read the credits afterward. Auggie is a smart, sensitive kid who likes science and Minecraft, and has adapted pretty well to life inside his family unit. He tends to wear an oversized astronaut's helmet in public to avoid stares; it's his armor, really. So he has a tough time when his parents ask him to relinquish it.

Auggie does face teasing and isolation, but also picks up a friend in Jack Will (Noah Jupe), a poor scholarship kid with a nice streak. The joy on mom's face when he brings home a pal to play is worth the price of admission alone. Still, old troubles soon follow and Auggie finds himself estranged again.

He's got an older teen sister, Via (Izabela Vidovic), and I was impressed the film devotes a significant amount of screen time following her life and seeing how it's impacted by having a brother who soaks up every ounce of attention from their parents. She's quiet and shy, and dealing with an unexpected fallout with her own best friend, Miranda (Danielle Rose Russell).

She starts to blossom when she joins the school theater club, and meets a cute, funny boy named Justin (Nadji Jeter) who takes a fancy to her.

I also greatly enjoyed Mandy Patinkin as Mr. Tushman, the headmaster of the school who understands the way kids actually think and behave, rather than the idealized regard in which their parents hold them. He is infinitely patient and kind, makes jokes about his name before the students have a chance to, and even manages to treat the bullies in a way that lets them know they are not irredeemable. He's basically the Santa Claus of educators.

"Wonder" plays out exactly the way we expect. Given the premise, we could practically write the ending ourselves. But it's still a touching movie that celebrates the weak and the meek, and shows there different kinds of strength.