From ‘Good Boys’ to ‘Kick-Ass:’ What’s the Appeal of Badly-Behaved Children in R-Rated Comedies?

I admit it: I clutched my metaphorical pearls when I saw the Good Boys trailer. It wasn’t the swearing, questions about sex, or disobedience that I objected to—I recognize that those are all real and perfectly normal things that children do and have—it’s the attitude toward all of it. But though this film—the latest from producers Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg—may take the idea of kids’ saying R-rated things further than it’s gone in recent years, it’s hardly the only example.

For starters, Chloë Grace Moretz got her start as the gun-wielding, f-bomb dropping, 11-year-old Hit Girl in 2010’s Kick-Ass. The 2008 Paul Rudd comedy Role Models relied on a foul-mouthed child named Ronnie for its humor. And, though he didn’t do much swearing, Dennis the Menace revolved around the idea of a troublesome little boy. Animated shows and films can use the trope more freely since they needn’t involve the messiness of child actors: Bart Simpson never ran out of rude comments, the kids of South Park were infamous for profanity and violence, and Stewie from Family Guy—perhaps the youngest example out there—is an actual baby who talks about sex. These characters are beloved by adults as much (and often more than) they are beloved by kids. But what is it exactly that draws us to them? I have a few theories.

In case you haven’t had the pleasure of seeing the Good Boys trailer, the premise is this: Three 12-year-olds—played by Jacob Tremblay, Brady Noon, and Keith L. Williams—are, well, not very good boys. They want to impress girls at their first sixth-grade party, and so embark on a mission to learn how kissing works, stumbling across sex toys, drugs, and other R-rated shenanigans. Though they may not know the mechanics of the literal definition of the word “fuck,” that doesn’t stop them from peppering it into every other sentence they utter. Directed by Gene Stupnitsky, who also co-wrote the script with his longtime collaborator, Lee Eisenberg (Year One, Bad Teacher), it’s clearly intended to push the acting-too-mature-for-their-age precious children trope to its limits.

Rogen is fond of doing this with comedy taboos—the excruciatingly explicit animated food orgy in 2016’s Sausage Party comes to mind—and usually, I find that quality of his films refreshing. If Rogen’s recent demonstration of sensitivity and evolution in the surprisingly feminist romantic comedy Long Shot is any indication, Good Boys will handle itself as responsibly as it possibly can. Early reviews attest to the lessons the boys learn about consent and boundaries. That’s great. But though my loyalty to Rogen extends to animated food dick jokes, I just can’t bring myself to extend it to real, in-the-flesh child actor dick jokes. It didn’t help that I was imagining those child actors learning those lines and acting out those scenes years before they were old enough to truly comprehend what they were saying. (Tremblay, who earned critical acclaim for his performance as the child of a kidnapped woman in 2015’s Room, said he more than once asked his parents what certain jokes in the script meant, and that one particularly gross sequence involving vomiting, made him vomit for real.)

Still, I can’t deny that this film, and this trope, is appealing to others. Why?

Good Ol’ Fashioned Shock Value

To paraphrase Aristotle, comedy is all about surprise. Am I surprised when a 12-year-old talks about his “big dick,” refers to his beverage as a “fucking juice box,” or whips around anal beads like a nunchuck? Of course I am! And judging by the reaction in my theater when all of the above happened in the Good Boys trailer, audiences were surprised too. We expect children to behave in a certain way, so when they subvert our expectations and instead behave like a 21-year-old frat boy, we laugh. Will the shock wear thin after those same expectations are subverted in the same way over and over again for two hours straight? That likely depends on your proximity to your inner 21-year-old frat boy.

Nostalgia for Fallout-Free Immaturity

Life was easier and jokes were funnier when we were kids, right? As much as our parents told us our actions had consequences, that wasn’t really true—if we were rude, lied, or did something else morally wrong, we weren’t going to lose our jobs, alienate our loved ones, or face public shaming on social media (or, at least, so we thought). Good Boys also plays into teenagers’ nostalgia in a way that Rogen’s more age-appropriate version of this story, Superbad, may not. If the teens of 2019 are anything like me at 16, they already feel nostalgia for their childhood years, despite the fact that they were only a few years ago. When you’re facing the anxiety-inducing prospect of adulthood, it’s understandably fun to go back to being a kid for a few hours. My lack of nostalgia for this version of childhood undoubtedly prevents me from enjoying this trope the way others do: I was never a badly-behaved boy and feel no personal connection to what I assume some see as a portrayal of happier, simpler times.

Feeling Superior to Those Dumb Kids

Stewie in Family Guy may not understand how sex works, but we—cool, sex-having adults—do. These mouthy kids may try to act wise beyond their years, but we know better: There’s so much for them to learn. Who doesn’t love to feel knowledgeable and superior? This is my least favorite part of the trope: Are we really so much better than kids because we have sex and know what molly is? Call me a prude or a killjoy, but it rubs me the wrong way. I can’t help but think of 12-year-olds who will, undoubtedly, find a way around that R-rating to watch Good Boys or Kick-Ass or South Park. I worry they’ll see the way adults laugh at these young characters and feel pressured to learn about these topics ASAP so that they can hurry up and be cool. I worry this pressure may be felt acutely by young boys in particular, who are absorbing that hyper-masculine, sometimes violent persona just to make their friends laugh. Maybe I’m overreacting: it’s a movie! It’s a TV show! It’s funny! Kids aren’t as fragile and precious as I’m making them out to be! That’s probably true. But I still can’t bring myself to laugh it.

That said, I’m sure Good Boys will be funny, if only because Rogen’s films usually are. And while mouthy children talking about sex may never appeal to me, I can’t say I don’t understand why it does to others. As long as audiences keep laughing, the trope’s not going away any time soon.

Where to stream Kick-Ass

Where to stream Sausage Party