Freshman engage in some fairly predictable debauchery in this routine high school gross-out comedy streaming on Netflix.
“Incoming,” a bawdy teen comedy from the directors Dave and John Chernin, opens with a familiar gag: an awkward adolescent boy (Mason Thames) delivers a speech to the camera professing his love, only for a cut to reveal that he’s actually rehearsing in the mirror. In a genre rank with cliché, this is not a very promising start — it suggests that the Chernins, who also penned the screenplay, are satisfied with whatever joke is closest to hand.
The rest of the movie does little to dispel that impression. Its story of high school freshmen navigating a libertine house party follows exactly the trajectory you would expect, with few laughs and even fewer surprises. If there’s a cute girl incoming, she’ll be introduced in a slow motion montage. If a couple leans in for a kiss, they’ll be interrupted by a lewd gag. Will the dork score with the hottie? Will the rowdy teacher get out of hand? Cue the record scratch sound effect!
A generous interpretation is that “Incoming” is derivative as an act of loving homage. In practice, it just feels old hat. The movie is heavily indebted to the teen gross-out comedies of the late 1990s and early 2000s, like “American Pie” and “Van Wilder,” which were themselves indebted to the teen sex comedies of the 1980s, like “Porky’s” and “Screwballs,” and it’s so far from an original idea or point of view that it’s hard to see the point.
All it offers is ribald escalation: Instead of beer bongs, there are lines of ketamine; instead of fart jokes, there’s diarrhea in a Tesla. Maybe that’s progress. But I’d say the filmmakers flunked.
Incoming
Rated R for strong language, drug use, sexual innuendo, mild violence and “Porky’s”-style shenanigans. Running time: 1 hour 31 minutes. Watch on Netflix.
Source: Movies - nytimes.com
