Incoming

Grade: B+

I smiled with delight at the opening lines of Incoming. “We’ve been friends for a long time. Since we were kids. But I’m in high school now.” And then I laughed heartily a few times throughout the movie, at various lines and sight gags – some of my biggest laughs of the year. Incoming is American Pie for this generation. I liked it better than American Pie, which turned 25 this year. Maybe in another 25 years, when we get another one like it, and I’m 68, and the teenagers who are connecting with Incoming are my age now, they will say “this new one is Incoming for today’s kids.” It’s the circle of life, Simba.

I was afraid the movie would be an unceasing frenetic Tasmanian Devil of energy, and it would get tiresome. The first few scenes seemed to be going in that direction. Thankfully, it doesn’t stay at that level. Screenwriters Dave and John Chernin let it breathe. There are a few characters we follow, but the primary one is Benj, an incoming high school freshman. Mason Thames (The Black Phone) plays him with the youthful earnestness and vocal affectations of a Teen Wolf/Family Ties era Michael J. Fox. Benj has long been nursing a crush on his older sister’s best friend Bailey. She, unfortunately, is a sophomore, while he is a lowly F word, so whattaya gonna do.

Benj’s closest friends include fellow new 9th graders Eddie, Connor, and Koosh. Each major character is involved in a subplot of their own, but these stories all come from an epic party hosted by Koosh’s older brother – a senior – after the first week of school. (“It’s my party, too,” Koosh keeps saying. “We’re co-hosting. It’s a joint thing.” Yeah, sure.)

It’s one of those movie parties where everything imaginable happens to everyone in the course of one night – and by the time they’re back to the grind on Monday morning (with that “welcome back, students” sign carrying extra significance, given all that they’ve been through), we feel like they were born, grew up, grew old, and died. A similar party takes place in Prom Dates, out earlier this year. I didn’t like Prom Dates, but I loved Incoming quite a bit. I think I’ve put my finger on why it worked so well here, and the film didn’t derail because of it. In Incoming, these are great kids with good heads on their shoulders, deep down inside. They make mistakes, but I wanted them to learn from them, come out more or less unscathed, and be better for it. And that happens. These people want to do the right thing.

And what a copious amount of laughs and fun there is to be had along the way. Kaitlin Olson (It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Champions) has some show stopping scenes. Bobby Cannavale plays a hip chemistry teacher who everybody loves. He’s been busy; this is the third film I’ve seen him in this year alone, after Ezra and MaXXXine. If you question the ethicality of him showing up at the party, doing shots with the kids, and partaking in other stuff with them…well, his story gets closure in a credits scene.

Incoming almost went the distance and earned the next highest grade from me. I really wanted to give it, and thought I would. Consider my rating a very strong one. I had to ding it because of a few plot devices that felt forced. At the party, at the most predictable moment, somebody walks in on someone else doing something. The last scene is a school assembly where a freshman, one week in, is granted the microphone at the last minute, and what happens is allowed to go on without interruption by anyone in authority. The ending is abrupt; I thought there would be one more scene. It wasn’t needed. The movie is smart enough to know that not everything will be solved and resolved over one weekend, or due to one inexplicable showboating episode in front of the student body. As Benj says in the final line, “Lot of year left.”

Grade: B+