Good Boys

“Good Boys” is the story of three friends, Max, Lucas and Thor, who are going into sixth grade and trying to figure out how to kiss girls so that Max can have success at his first kissing party.  They decide to use Max’s dad’s drone to observe some neighbor girls.  Max has been strongly warned not to touch it.  And….you know what’s going to happen! The rest of the movie has the three boys making some extremely bad descisons; which include skipping school, drinking beer, locking a policeman in a store, wrecking the drone, and beating up some Frat boys.  There is a hilarious sequence involving Stephen Merchant and a “CPR doll.”  The boys ( Jacob Tremblay, Keith L. Williams and Brady Noon) are likable and amazingly believable as sixth graders trying to navigate the beginnings of puberty. As someone who has been teaching middle school for 32 years, I found the performances surprisingly realistic.  There is also a timely message about how you can be friends with people who may have different interests than you do.  I was prepared to think this was a dumb movie, but I ended up laughing throughout and actually enjoyed myself.