'Incoming' review: Netflix teen comedy puts too much cringe in the way of the grins

With the drug-laced, alcohol-infused, cheerfully gross and slapstick-violent “Incoming,” Netflix and the Chernin brothers of “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” and “The Mick” success are trying to bring back the R-rated teen comedy.

It’s a genre that goes back to “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” (1982) or even earlier and continued on through films such as “American Pie” (1999) and “Superbad” (2007) before falling out of favor in recent times, mostly due to plot elements that viewed through today’s lens are problematic and in some cases cringe-level offensive. (See “Sixteen Candles,” which is smart and funny and touching, but also brimming with objectionable content.)

I’m all for pushing the limits of taste in the name of edgy laughs and portrayals of teen life that don’t sugarcoat the realities of teen life, but while “Incoming” easily earns its R rating, it has a bit of foul odor about it and features far too many cheap gross-out gags and the inclusion of some genuinely creepy characters whose actions range from the morally questionable to flat-out criminal.

Let’s take a look at a few of the storylines that transpire over the obligatory One Crazy Night that consumes more than half of the film:

• A popular girl gets falling-down drunk at a party before stumbling into a Tesla driven by two 15-year-olds in the mistaken belief it’s her Uber. She demands the boys take her to Taco Bell, where she wolfs down food in the car like a crazed animal. You can probably guess what happens next — but trust me, it’s even worse than that.
• A 50ish chemistry teacher drops in on the party and starts doing shots with students. He keeps saying he’s going to leave, but he stays.
• A group of students are getting wasted on ketamine, with one kid explaining to a newbie, “It’s like, for cats, I think. Might be horses. S---, I forgot.” Wacky!
• A sophomore girl sees her ex with someone else and says to her friend about the new girl: “Her head is like, huge, OK? It’s just a fact. Not that it matters. You know I’m all about body positivity. Beauty’s a mostly male construct anyway. Maybe it is, actually, a medical issue. What if there’s something wrong and she’s not just ugly?”

There’s more, so much more, but we’ll stop there. Suffice to say “Incoming” embraces a number of teen comedy tropes and tries to do something clever and original, but winds up relying on the easy way out, i.e., when in doubt, have someone get sick or pass out, or start a brawl.

We start off in rather promising fashion, in large part due to the earnest likability of the young cast members. Mason Thames (“The Black Phone”) plays the good-natured and smart but insecure Benji, whose friends include fellow incoming freshmen Connor (Raphael Alejandro), who is so small an upperclassman instantly dubs him “Fetus”; Eddie (Ramon Reed), who is scared of everything and just wants to stay out of trouble, and Danah aka Koosh (Bardia Seiri), who aspires to be a baller just like his putatively badass older brother, who is hosting the big bash on the first Friday night of the new school year. (As per usual, the parents are out of town and the neighbors seem to be oblivious to this gigantic blowout.)

Ali Gallo plays Benji’s mean-spirited older sister, who tells him, “High school’s gonna murder you,” while Isabella Ferreira is Bailey, the clichéd girl of Benji’s dreams, if only he can finally muster the courage to tell her how he really feels. TikTok star Loren Gray (she has 54.6 MILLION followers) shows a knack for comedy, even saddled with the thankless role of the aforementioned drunk girl who’s all about downing chalupas. (As for the grown-ups, the versatile and usually reliable Bobby Cannavale has one of the most embarrassing roles of his career as the smarmy chem teacher, and the wonderful Kaitlin Olson has very little to do as the mother of Benji and Alyssa.)

It's a good cast. The soundtrack is fun. There’s a decent stab at turning a particularly overdone Teen Movie scene into something at least semi-fresh. I laughed twice, maybe three times. On balance, though, “Incoming” gets a D+, maybe a C- at best.