The 12th year of any child’s life is hand’s down one of the hardest. Puberty. Crushes. Kissing – or, worse still, not kissing. Navigating tribal social hierarchies. Pimples. 12-year olds are cruel by nature, subhuman often. Nasty little balls of hormones and primordial grease, desperate for acceptance, playing at their sick game of systematic demoralization. But so too can they be funny little buggers – particularly in hindsight – and never moreso than in Point Grey Picture’s uproarious and devious little guy comedy, Good Boys.

The film written and directed by The Office alum Gene Stupnitsky and produced by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg is very much in line with the comedic stylings of the pair’s previous output, in particular Superbad, if only the clock were rewound to middle school. Capturing that same sense of awkward dread that Bo Burnham so effortlessly conjured with Eighth Grade, Good Times thrives by virtue of understanding the unique trials and tribulations of the tween, this time ramming it through a laugh-a-minute studio comedy assembly line. The effect is often dizzyingly funny, with laughs that grow increasingly in volume until you’re often missing bits and pieces of probably also very funny dialogue, drowned out by the howls of your own laughter.

Max (Jacob Tremblay), Lucas (Keith L. Williams) and Thor (Brady Noon) are the Bean Bag Boys, an unbreakable triplet of BFFs who “do everything together”. When they are invited to their first kissing party, the Bean Bag Boys (named innocently for the fact that they have a set of bean bags) spy on neighbors Hannah (Molly Gordon) and Lily (Midori Francis) to learn the secret art of mouth-on-mouth action. In the process, they lose Max’s Dad’s (Will Forte) treasured drone and make enemies of the hard-partying seniors frightfully intent on rolling at a Kendrick Lamar show. Facing grounding and no kissing party, the trio must race across town on a mission that brings them face-to-face with too-tired-to-be-bothered cops, frat boy drug dealers, sex dolls, and cool sips of warm beer.

Good Boys presents a clever reversal on the usual R-rated raunch-laced comedy in that much of its most potent comedy comes from its leads’ innocence. Despite slinging the F-word as if their lives depend on it, the Bean Bag Boys are vessels of mid-pubescent purity. They fall face-first into adult situations, confusing anal beads for designer jewelry and mistaking “molly” for a missing girl, but still maintain a sense of genuine innocence, something often missing in these kinds of movies. The balancing act of their virgin little minds and the lechery that they keep landing in is never far from mind with Stupnitsky always figuring out the perfect way to mine this dichotomy for utmost laughs. And through their myriad malapropisms, Good Boys mines its strongest comedic moments; where the tweens misinterpret their surrounding, or act like they know about something “adult” that they clearly have no idea about, or even just mispronounce words like “cum”, Good Boys is great.

This simple hook will make or break the film’s mainstream reception, the premise of 12-year olds involved in comically adult situations could easily prove too off-putting for anyone who doesn’t want to see tweens wielding dildos like nunchucks or bartering with a creep over the price of a sex doll. Make no mistake, Good Boys is intended for adult audiences but those willing to watch kids get raunchous will have plenty to cackle at.

Beyond being a laugh-laced comedic goldmine, Good Boys actually connects audiences to the heart of these characters. Tremblay is unsurprisingly adept at comedy but creates a rounded character with Max who is more than just the joke vestibule that a lesser comedy might have settled with. We understand his urges and the lengths he goes to to get to that fated kissing party because we have all been Max at some point, convinced that the rest of our lives hangs in the fate of going lip to lip with your beloved crush. Keith L. Williams as the rule-abiding Lucas is a breakout star here, delivering a lovable brown-nosing narc who you can’t help but adore for his pure-heartedness and Williams is a perfect match for the material. As Brady Noon’s Thor navigates the crossroads between following his passion for theater and singing and not wanting to be made fun of by the cool kids, we empathize because we can all recall a day when we abandoned something we loved because it was no longer considered cool.

Through the exploration of these tween’s maturity – or lack thereof – Good Boys is able to break out from being a simple-minded R-rated comedy and actually tries to create something more lasting and emotionally palpable. Our cackles are complemented and intensified by the inherent sweetness of these characters and their story of growing up and growing apart. And just as anyone who’s had a friendship fade over getting older, discovering new interests, or moving to the other side of town, Good Boys asks us to remember and reflect on a time in our live that most probably want to leave buried but to do so with a hearty laugh and a bundle of forgiveness and understanding.

CONCLUSION: 2019 has already been an unexpectedly great year for comedy with Booksmart, The Art of Self-Defense, The Death of Dick Long, Long Shot and even Stuber, but the irreverent and endearing ‘Good Boys’ is a potential cult classic that thrives on its hilarious juxtaposing of tween innocence and raunchy adult-aimed laughs.