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Ed Araquel / Universal Pictures

If you think a 12-year-old saying "fuck" is kinda funny—and for the record, I'm not judging you—then you'll probably have fun with Good Boys. There are a bunch of 12-year-olds in it, and they all say "fuck" a lot, which also doubles as the film's plot synopsis.

If you don't think that sounds funny, stay far away, because you really won't like the part where the kids mistake a pile of dildos for ninja weapons. Is any of this good comedy? Hard to say. I'm not even sure it's possible to make an entire movie about middle-school boners, but an attempt has certainly been made here. And the talented young cast does succeed in capturing some of the amusing paradoxes of early adolescence in this heightened era. But Good Boys also struggles with tone and pacing, and it frequently looks more like a high-end web series than a theatrically released, feature-length film. Making a middle-school sex comedy in 2019 is an undeniably tall order, and that Good Boys' filmmakers got somewhere close is... hmm. "Admirable" feels like the wrong word. But I, at least, did laugh a lot more than I was expecting to at a kid saying "fuck."