Teenage smut party Incoming (now on Netflix) is notable for a couple of reasons: It’s written and directed by brothers Dave and John Chernin, creators of the sitcom The mick and writers with a long career in It’s always sunny in PhiladelphiaIt also stars up-and-coming Mason Thames of The black phone Fame, which seems ripe for bigger things. The question here is whether this creative conglomerate can replace the Super bad This high school comedy seems to be begging for comparisons. (Spoiler alert in the review: it doesn’t!)
INCOMINGSTREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The essence: We meet Benj (Thames) as he practices kissing by smashing his lips together in the mirror, and then his older sister, Alyssa (Ali Gallo), bursts in and forces him to cover his, you know, lips. outgoing. Embarrassment… and of course, this is just the beginning. It’s a very auspicious morning for Benj’s first day of high school, and he brings with him a lot of baggage: He’s mortified by his reputation as a theater kid with the voice of an angel. He’s head over heels in love with Alyssa’s best friend, Bailey (Isabella Ferreira). And he belongs to a social circle of dorks that includes the following people: Eddie (Ramon Reed), a very risk-averse guy who’s mortified by the fact that his mother is dating a real scumbag, Dennis (Scott MacArthur). Connor (Raphael Alejandro), who looks so prepubescent he could pass for an elementary school student, which is why he’s nicknamed Fetus five minutes into his freshman year. And Danah, aka Koosh (Bardia Seiri), a rich kid who studies rom-coms and, imagine, edgy teen comedies in search of templates for meet-cutes that, he hopes, will help him get laid.
Inevitably, there’s a party celebrating the first week of school, and the only reason our main quartet is invited is because it’s being thrown by Koosh’s violently sociopathic brother, Kayvon (Kayvan Shai). Benj sees it as his big chance to charm Bailey. Connor and Dennis, between one thing and another, end up taking care of Katrina (Loren Gray), a popular girl with half a million Instagram followers, after she passes out, eats too much Taco Bell, and blows up the inside of Dennis’ Tesla with a fountain of diarrhea. Danah schemes to get a girl into her basement spa. You know how this shit goes.
The party takes up about two-thirds of the movie. At his mansion, everything is pure chaos: swimming, nudity, beer kegs, ketamine, bongs, fights, fires, piss, peer pressure, casual sex. Even desperate chemistry teacher Studebaker (Bobby Cannavale) shows up and becomes the life of the party. We may be rewarded with a sweet moment here or there (Benj really is a good guy) and we deserve it after the incessant, disgusting diarrhea scene. But is it enough? No. It’s not even a tough call.
What movies will it remind you of? Super bad It was 17 years ago – and American cake It was 25 years ago and Revenge of the Nerds It was 40 years ago and Porky’s It was 43 years ago, yyy andAnd it seems we’ve gotten over the politically correct backlash a bit and are back to the nastiness of gross-out comedies.
Performance worth watching: Thames and Ferreira strike me as real actors who will go on to do better things than dodge projectile vomit.
Memorable dialogue: Danah manages to get laughs with a self-referential bit of comedy: “Guys are always plotting to get girls for movies. They spy on them or dress up like girls to steal their secrets. I saw six different movies where a guy convinces a girl with amnesia that she is his wife!”
Sex and skin: Short breasts and wang; a Oops! I stumbled upon a sexual relationship! shot.
Our opinion: I haven’t even mentioned Kaitlin Olson’s role as Benj’s mother yet; the veteran comedian earns the biggest laughs with a single line during a scene featuring an outraged mother. She’s so inspiring that you’ll be sad Olson doesn’t have a prominent role here (she has two, maybe three scenes?). It’s just too bad you have to endure the endless hellish torment of the diarrhea subplot in order to get to it, something that might inspire you to lunge for the power button on your remote like Ali to Frazier.
Such a plentiful display of excrement is more than enough to derail a recommendation. But I’ll add more: stereotypical thin-person characters, cringe comedy, the usual cool-kid/dumb-kid dynamic (slightly updated for the 2020s, I guess), the big climactic scene where the protagonist gives a speech in front of the entire school, etc. American cake, Incoming is densely populated with horny and horny toads. Unlike Super badIt doesn’t quite reach a level of sincere emotion that inspires us to care about the characters, though, well, at least they tried? Almost? Sort of? There are a few instances of workable comedy (a witty line here, a passing bit there), but ultimately the laugh-to-nausea ratio is way off.
Our calling: Incoming? Rather The contents of your stomach coming out. Skip it.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
