“It’s Harold & Kumar meets Thirteen,” one can imagine the pitch for Augustine Frizzell’s Never Goin’ Back might have gone. At worst, this premise might scan as innocuous, at best, radical: a female re-imagining of that early ‘00s crude cult favorite, the stoner comedy. Women-centric renderings of male-dominated movie spaces are deeply in vogue: Girls Trip for reunions, Trainwreck for arrested adolescence, Ghostbusters for Ghostbusters. It was only a matter of time before Clerks and Dude Where’s My Car received their female due.
Frizzell’s film delivers on this promise crassly and dubiously, but then again, the promise was crass and dubious to begin with. The stoners here are Jessie (Camila Morrone) and Angela (Maia Mitchell), 16-year-old high school dropouts barely subsisting on the minimal weekly wages from the waitressing job they despise. At the film’s start, Angela impulsively booked a weeklong beachside getaway package as a surprise gift for Jessie’s birthday. And she used their rent money to buy it. Ergo, the best friends and Dallas-based roommates will have to work double shifts at the diner all week to afford it.
“…16-year-old high school dropouts barely subsisting on…the waitressing job they despise.”
Recklessness is a theme and running joke for the pair. They’re at a party surrounded by drugs but have to go to work in an hour; how will they resist the temptation? A cranky old man scolds their skimpy outfits in a grocery store; how can they walk away without ridiculing him in return? In sum: how will they ever moderate their mania and contempt just enough to make it through the workweek? Dude, where’s my prudence?
Jessie and Angela epitomize a stale cinematic brand of white girl rebel, one whose pastimes include cocaine, walking around in underwear, and the word “f**k.” Because of this, the movie rides on its two central performances by Instagram socialites Maia Mitchell and Cami Morrone, who, amidst the farce, manage to construct a friendship that reads as genuinely charming and true. To its credit, the movie refuses to punish the girls for their utter disdain toward everybody but each other. They may be lazy miscreants, but they’re not sinners, and like any good teenage best friend duo, they know where their loyalty lies.
“…we could always use more movies of the women-behaving-badly variety.”
You can expect the same defecation and drug humor that crud up comedies of this ilk. Of course, its vacuity is intentional, and maybe we could always use more movies of the women-behaving-badly variety. But there’s also a real danger in perpetuating this type of teenage girl; it propagates the idea that, for women, defiance is power, radicalism is freedom, and being really hot is often all you need to survive.
Never Goin’ Back (2018) Written and directed by Augustine Frizzell. Starring Maia Mitchell, Cami Morrone, and Kyle Mooney.
Grade: C
A film like this isn’t propagating nor propogating some kind of “legendary” reality in which young people exist — particularly those in communities with about no chance. It’s REFLECTING a presence that is very normal.
This is more or less like one of the few movies out there that some non-feminists would find uncool. Apart from this, the screenplay is on point. Everyone can easily relate to the plot being a common phenomenon among the middle-class American homes. Rent, hustle, and other related issues are prominent in the movie.
Thanks to the highly energetic soundtrack and charismatic lead actresses, the movie was able to drive home its point. However, overall, I still feel the producers should have done more than what they did with the film.
Thank you for speaking the truth. Our dumbed down society accepts these pointless attempts of remaking really bad movies with guys. It seems many female directors are looking to a bunch of male directors that are nothing more than scatalogical boobs. The fact the movies like Hangover or anything made by Seth Rogan are some how good cinema is ridiculous. It’s that or Kathryn Bigelow making war movies with mostly men.
I think the real problem the lack of interest in film makers of the past that were real artists.
I laughed at the comments about when the woman said that an outcome in the movie had nothing to do with their looks. I’m sorry, but there is no way in hell that you can deny the fact that these girls are central casting Hollywood hotties. I’m sure it came down to them and a couple of over-weight black girls but the models nailed their final audition.
I haven’t seen the film, so cannot comment with authority on its content. But from the trailer and from various reviews I’ve read I believe that I have a decent grasp on what to expect once I do get to see it.
It may have been a few centuries since I was in high school, and I certainly had more opportunity (whether I made good on it, that’s a different question) than they appear to have. But this is pretty much how everyone I knew in HS felt, on one level or another. You have to suck yourself and your friends into your own bubble-universe where, indeed, pretty much all that matters is what you can get out of the next day/week/month/whatever. The 16 year-old brain is not highly developed, this is a neurological fact.
A film like this is not perpetuating nor propogating some sort of “mythical” reality in which teenagers exist — especially those in small towns with nearly no opportunity. It’s REFLECTING an existence that is all-too common.
Wow. To say that this film exists only as a counterpart to male comedies ‘of the same ilk’ or because it’s ‘in vogue’ to have female centric films, is reductive and base.
And saying that the two leads are surviving only because they’re ‘really hot’ is incredibly sexist. I *just* saw this film and the two main girls not only get away with nothing, but the one time they do get something, it has nothing to do with their looks.
Also this film is hilarious and as a Maia Mitchell fan, she’s an actress, not an instagram socialite. Yes she may have a lot of followers, but again, what a simplistic and insulting way to discredit someone who has made her career by ACTING.
I found the film funny, refreshing and FUN! I’d say lighten up, but the reviewer seems to have missed the point all together. Clearly attempting to sound pedantic and woke, this review instead comes off as sexist, stodgy and pedestrian.
(Also, defiance and radicalism are a huge part of the feminist movement and not dangerous to teach to teenage girls. I’d wager the opposite.)
This review is so on point. A24 hype machine is in full swing.