Incoming (2024)
Directors: Dave Chernin, John Chernin
Screenwriters: Dave Chernin, John Chernin
Starring: Mason Thames, Ali Gallo, Isabella Ferreira, Ramon Reed, Raphael Alejandro, Bardia Seiri, Bobby Cannavale

Four Freshman start high school. They are pumped full of hormones and ready to mingle. Benj (Mason Thames), Connor (Raphael Alejandro), Eddie (Ramon Reed) and Koosh (Bardia Seiri) are excited to start this new chapter of their lives. Benj is a hopeless romantic and is deeply in love – the very intense and well-articulated love that only a Hollywood fourteen-year-old can feel – with his sister’s best friend Bailey (Isabella Ferreira), a sophomore (second year) who’s much more world-wise and better conversed with the politics of high school.

This unnamed school is a complete caricature. Not one person feels realistic. There is a noticeable absence of some of the usual high school comedy characters: the geeks, jocks and bleacher goths are all missing. Instead, this school appears to enrol only the unfeasibly attractive, super sexed, super violent, drug dealers and super rich (how else are they going to drive Teslas at fifteen, have a steady supply of ketamine, afford nose jobs, and have detached houses big enough to party with the entire school and not get noise complaints from the neighbours?)

While the mix of kids is slightly different to high school romps we’ve seen before, all the hallmark tropes audiences have come to expect from teen movies are here. There’s a boy who ‘loves’ an unattainable girl, a boy that needs to be put in his place, a goofy sidekick who seems destined to learn nothing, a hot girl who will be humbled, and a teacher who’s going to be inappropriate. Viewers of a certain vintage will be in very familiar territory. But American Pie (1999) this is not.

 

 

It is not surprising that two writers who’ve worked on the TV show ‘It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’ (2005–present), a comedy known for pushing limits and being distasteful – Frank Reynolds (Danny DeVito) shaved and covered in hand sanitiser, Charlie Kelly (Charlie Day) eating a rat, Liam McPolye (Jimmi Simpson) just in general… you get the gist – have tried to utilise this same style of humour. However, the reason it works in ‘It’s Always Sunny’ is because over the course of the series the audience has had so much more time with the characters that they have seen their softer sides, the less cartoonish side of the gang. There are breaks between the gross-out, the dark and the downright despicable. The characters are bad people and they’re also adults.

The major problem with Incoming is that it’s obvious that Chernin and Chernin want their audience to like the kids. The slow panning of a rapt crowd sincerely nodding along to a romantic gesture, the bare-knuckle fight ending in shoulder slaps and toothless smiles, and a few half-hearted ‘you should just be yourself’ moments make this obvious. But they haven’t put in the work or successfully developed the characters. It’s 80 minutes of every character acting awfully with few redeeming features. Hoping the audience remembers their own awkward teenage years and feels sorry for Benj and his cronies isn’t enough. Too much work is left to us to make assumptions and fill in the gaps. Mr Studebaker’s (Bobby Cannavale) separation from his partner is given a few lines of dialogue and that appears to be the only reason he is at the party, drinking shots with his students. And how did he end up with the Bunsen burner? We’ll never know.

Incoming does have its moments. Ramon Reed and Raphael Alejandro are particularly good. Don’t let Alejandro’s fresh face fool you, he’s already got quite the list of IMDB credits under his name. Without the burden of having to come to a deep realisation about being their true selves – like Benj, Alyssa (Ali Gallo) and Koosh – they can simply have fun with their ridiculous and scatological side quest.

Yes, Incoming is trying to do something different but it’s not quite hitting the mark, because ultimately it is still a boy wants girl scenario. Boring and done to death. The toilet humour doesn’t make up for a sub-par plot. The characters have nothing to overcome, so the audience has nothing to root for. Getting with a girl at a party and telling your sort of stepdad to fuck off does not a hurdle make. C-, must try harder.

Score: 10/24