With the drug- and alcohol-soaked, gleefully gross and slapstick brutality of “Incoming,” Netflix and the Chernin brothers, behind the hits “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” and “The Mick,” are attempting to bring back the R-rated teen comedy.
It’s a genre that dates back to “I Think I’m Standing in the Woods” (1982) or even earlier, and continued through films like “American Pie” (1999) and “Superbad” (2007) before falling out of fashion in recent times, mainly due to plot elements that are problematic from a modern perspective and, in some cases, offensive and embarrassing. (See “Only Adults Can Do That,” which is clever and funny and touching, but also full of offensive content.)
I’m all for pushing the boundaries of taste to come up with snarky laughs and portrayals of teenage life that don’t sugarcoat the realities of teenage life. But while Incoming easily deserves its R rating, the film has a somewhat foul odor and contains far too many cheap gross-out gags, as well as the inclusion of some truly creepy characters whose actions range from morally questionable to downright criminal.
Let’s take a look at some of the plot lines that unfold during the obligatory “One Crazy Night,” which takes up more than half of the film:
- A popular girl gets blackout drunk at a party and then stumbles into a Tesla driven by two 15-year-olds, mistakenly believing it’s her Uber. She demands that the guys take her to Taco Bell, where she wolfs down her food in the car like a crazed animal. You can probably guess what happens next—but trust me, it’s even worse.
- A chemistry teacher, about 50 years old, comes to the party and starts drinking shots with the students. He keeps saying he’s going to leave, but he stays.
- A group of college students are getting drunk on ketamine, and a kid explains to a newbie, “It’s like cats, I think. Could be horses too. S—, I forgot.” Crazy!
- A sophomore sees her ex with someone else and says to her friend about the new girl, “Her head is so huge, OK? That’s just a fact. Not that it matters. You know I’m all for body positivity. Beauty is a predominantly male construct anyway. Maybe it’s actually a medical issue. What if there’s something wrong and she’s not just ugly?”
There’s a lot more, but we’ll stop here. Suffice it to say that Incoming takes a number of teen comedy cliches and tries to do something clever and original, but ends up taking the easy way out, which is to say, when in doubt, let someone get sick or pass out or start a fight.
The beginning is quite promising, which is largely due to the genuine likeability of the young actors. Mason Thames (“The Black Telephone”) plays the good-natured and clever but insecure Benji, whose friends also include Connor (Raphael Alejandro), who is so small that a high school student immediately calls him “fetus”; Eddie (Ramon Reed), who is afraid of everything and just wants to avoid trouble; and Danah aka Koosh (Bardia Seiri), who, just like his supposedly tough older brother, wants to be a baller who throws a big party on the first Friday night of the new school year. (As usual, the parents are out of town and the neighbors don’t seem to notice this huge party.)
TikTok star Loren Gray plays a drunk girl whose visit to Taco Bell comes to an unfortunate end.
Ali Gallo plays Benji’s villainous older sister who tells him, “High school will kill you,” while Isabella Ferreira is Bailey, the cliched girl from Benji’s dreams, if only he could finally work up the courage to tell her how he really feels. TikTok star Loren Gray (she has 54.6 MILLION followers) shows a knack for comedy, even in the thankless role of the aforementioned drunk girl who’s only interested in downing chalupas. (As for the adults, the versatile and usually reliable Bobby Cannavale has one of the most awkward roles of his career as a smarmy chemistry teacher, and the wonderful Kaitlin Olson has very little to do as Benji and Alyssa’s mother.)
The cast is good. The soundtrack is fun. It tries to turn a particularly over-the-top scene from a teen movie into something somewhat fresh. I laughed twice, maybe three times. Overall, though, Incoming gets a D+, maybe a C- at best.
