Review: Netflix’s Superbad-esque Comedy Falls Flat

There are a few tried and true staples of the American high school: yellow buses, homecoming, prom, and the social safari that is the school cafeteria. With each micro-generation comes raunchy teen movies about trying to get some or remaining a loser for life. Incoming, the latest Netflix teen film from The Mick creators Dave and John Chernin, is the most recent attempt to revive the outrageous R-rated comedy genre that Hollywood now makes sporadically.

Like last year’s No Hard Feelings, Joy Ride, or Bottoms, Incoming seeks to channel the unrestrained debauchery of American Pie or Superbad, but aimed at kids born after both of those movies premiered. I’ve realized with horror that this fall’s freshmen, born in 2010, are the first of Gen Alpha to enter high school.

Much like its predecessors, Incoming focuses on a group at the bottom of the food chain: nerdy freshman boys who haven’t grown yet. Benj Nielsen (an endearing Mason Thames) and his friends – Connor (Raphael Alejandro), Eddie (Ramon Reed), and Danah “Koosh” Koushani (Bardia Seiri) – all look like children in a school populated with boorish proto-men played by actors in their late 20s.

The plot of this 91-minute film is admirably straightforward and brass-tacks: Benj, a former theater kid trying to rebrand, is in love with his older sister Alyssa’s (Ali Gallo) best friend Bailey (Isabella Ferreira), but she’s a sophomore and cool. Koosh needs to prove himself to his older brother Kayvon (Kayvan Shai), a sociopathic senior who regularly beats him up, by hooking up with someone. Kayvon’s blowout party during the first weekend of school offers an ideal opportunity for both schemes, plus plenty of Project X-style hijinks.

Though Incoming captures the raucous momentum of a high school party and the crass dialect of freshman boys (Koosh says the party will have “an insane dong-to-puss ratio”), the film has the consistently distracting sheen of a made-for-streaming production, making for unflattering comparisons to its inspirations. And its attempts at sensibility-pushing schtick work less effectively than some of its peers, most notably Netflix’s biting Do Revenge or Paramount’s Honor Society, both self-conscious throwbacks to blockbuster teen movies that embrace the campy satire of the genre.

Incoming also strives for ridiculous caricature – Alyssa has an openly acknowledged nose job as a sophomore, Benj’s monstrous senior carpool buddy (Thomas Barbusca) ropes him into a drug deal, Koosh installs a high-quality surveillance system to spy on potential targets for a “meet-cute” – that land as more cringe than funny. That’s especially true for Bobby Cannavale as the jocular chemistry teacher, so desperate for past glory and validation that he attends the party and then passes out – a waste of the actor’s palpable charisma and comedic timing on a character used only for pity laughs.

As veterans of It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia, the Chernin brothers incorporate touches of the long-running sitcom’s beloved crude humor, most obviously by casting Kaitlin Olson as Benj and Alyssa’s mom, a concerned parent stuck at maximum volume. Incoming works best when that sensibility meets a touch of sweetness – poor Benj’s nerves when he accidentally ends up in a K-hole, the bond of girls taking selfies while they pee in the yard, drunk girl babbling, or the revelations made in the post-party haze.

Unfortunately, those charming moments are outweighed by attempts at gross-out shock – a broken bone or, most egregiously, a subplot involving Connor and Eddie taking a blackout drunk popular senior girl (Loren Gray) to Taco Bell and enduring a bowel disaster so disgusting I nearly turned the movie off.

The over-reliance on poop jokes for half the movie admittedly burned through much of my goodwill, though not all of it. When the kids are not having an all-out brawl, attempting to scheme drug deals, or enduring a literal shit storm, little moments of chemistry, particularly between an appealing Thames and believably cool Ferreira, allow the movie to not feel like a formulaic R-rating writing exercise. The Chernins are savvy enough to not wrap the whole thing in a neat “just be yourself” bow in the end, but Incoming could have worn a little more of its heart on its sleeve.