Films like Booksmart, Mean Girls (the 2024 musical version), and other more recent entries into the teen movie canon have proven that it’s an increasingly hard egg to crack. There was a time when teen movies didn’t just attempt to capture the drama and intensity of high school — they shaped it. From John Hughes to Clueless to the original Mean Girls, previous eras bore out teen films that more successfully struck a balance between heart and edge, humor and reality, presenting characters that felt like real people experiencing real high school. Just look to the lingering popularity of The Breakfast Club or Fast Times at Ridgemont High, films that while firmly rooted in the ‘80s — a decade that cemented the subgenre’s ubiquity and brought it roaring into the everyday pop mainstream — have a certain authenticity that allows them to transcend the time period.
But as time has gone on, and the TikTok-ification of our brains has resulted in fads that come and go faster than we can swipe, it’s harder for films to retain that staying power and potential for future nostalgia. At the same time, the tropes of those films remain, leaving most things to come after them feeling like unappealing rehash of what’s already been done better and with more care. Moreover, the genre also seems to have lost its bite; long gone are the days of films like Heathers and Cruel Intentions — hell, even American Pie. There are anomalies of course, but few of those break through to the white noise of teen film mediocrity. Endless streaming options have certainly contributed to this slow death as well, with Netflix and co. churning out endless cruddy iterations on the formula every month.
And on that note, Incoming, from directors Dave and John Chernin, falls victim to that fading cultural attention span and failure to deliver anything novel or noteworthy. On the surface, it seems like a film poised for success; the Chernins cut their teeth on It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, perhaps the most raucously coarse sitcom of all time. But Incoming lacks any of character or comedic texture that distinguishes that project. Here, four high school freshman, Benj (Mason Thames, coming off a much better performance in The Black Phone), Connor (Raphael Alejandro), Eddie (Ramon Reed), and Danah aka “Koosh” (Bardia Seiri) are plagued by older crushes and older siblings. Having just survived their first week of school, the boys head to a party hosted by Koosh’s older brother (who also goes by Koosh). Typical high school party ruckus and debauchery ensues, but it’s bafflingly all neutered down to PG-levels, despite the film’s R rating.
And that’s about all there is too this Superbad wannabe. The film’s best parts involve the adults on hand. Bobby Cannavale plays chemistry teacher Mr. Studebaker, who at 50-something is still languishing in the glory days of high school, even attending the party and giving chemistry lessons with alcohol. Elsewhere, Kaitlin Olson, of It’s Always Sunny fame (and having also worked with the Chernins on the short-lived The Mick), plays Benj’s mom, and the funniest line in the movie (of few) comes during one of their interactions, when she asks Benj if he knows what ketamine is and he responds, “I think it’s for cats or something.” Other formula-approved highlights include the queen bee shitting her pants and a truly bonkers musical number that arrives at the end, but such littered minor moments unfortunately aren’t enough to save the film from its fate of forever languishing in the bargain bin of teen movie also-rans. Like so many other 21-century films of this ilk, Incoming fails to ever really arrive, let alone leave an impression.
DIRECTOR: Dave Chernin & John Chernin; CAST: Mason Thames, Ramon Reed, Isabella Ferreira, Kaitlin Olson; DISTRIBUTOR: Netflix; STREAMING: August 23; RUNTIME: 1 hr. 31 min.
