Featured DVD Review: Never Goin’ Back
October 29, 2018
Never Goin’ Back - Buy from Amazon: DVD
Never Goin’ Back opened in limited release with good reviews, but not great reviews. It wasn’t able to find an audience in theaters, but now that it is on the home market, is it worth checking out? Is it worth picking up?
This is a hard movie to give a plot summary for, because it is a slice of life film. Normally, you need to know the characters and their current situation, their goal, and the obstacle they need to overcome. We learn all of that in the first 15, maybe 20 minutes. From then on, its all spoilers.
The film stars Maia Mitchell and Camila Morrone as Angela and Jessie. The pair are high school dropouts who share a room in a house they rent with Angela’s older brother, Justin, and their other roommate, Brandon. Jessie’s 17th birthday is coming up and Angela has rented them a house on the beach in Galveston. However, she had to use the rent money to pay for it. It’s okay, because they have 10 shifts in the next week at the restaurant where they work and as long as they don’t miss a shift, they will be able to pay for everything.
It’s a good plan on paper, except for Angela and Jessie’s crippling incompetence, which you can tell will get them into trouble sooner or later. They only have a week to not screw up and their plan will work. However, things take a turn for the worse when Justin and his two friends, Tony and Ryan, try to get into the drug-dealing business. Things go wrong and Tony thinks Justin stole $500 from him. When he comes to collect, Justin’s not home, but Angela and Jessie are. No one is hurt and he doesn’t steal anything of real value, but he causes such a stink that their neighbors call the cops. This is bad news, because Angela and Jessie have drugs in their room, enough to get them locked up in Juvie for 48 hours, meaning they missed too many of their shifts at work to pay for their rent.
Now that they are out, they have to come up with a really good excuse so their boss, Roderick, won’t fire them. This is where their crippling incompetence really becomes a problem.
Never Goin’ Back is a stoner comedy film starring two women. Stoner comedy usually focuses on male characters, so this does help set it apart. On the other hand, there is an element common to nearly all stoner comedies that is a little more difficult to deal with, due to a specific issue with this movie. The writer / director, Augustine Frizzell, based this movie on her life. ... I really hope it is just inspired by her life, because Angela and Jessie are some of the dumbest characters on film. They also provide some of the funnier moments in Stoner Comedy, but I feel bad talking about how painfully dumb these two are, because they are based on real people. On the downside, if you are not a fan of stoner comedy, then these two could become really irritating really quickly. For example, we are introduced to one of their coworkers, Crystal, and my first reaction was, “Gee, Crystal’s kind of mean to them.” About half an hour later into the movie and my opinion changed to “Gee, Crystal’s almost a saint for putting up with these two as much as she does.”
There were two main aspects of their characters that made them bearable enough for most people, if not truly likable. Firstly, I think the fact that they are genuinely friends helps. Angela and Jessie actually care about each other and never get into contrived fights only to make up again. Secondly, Maia Mitchell and Camila Morrone have excellent chemistry and comedic timing. There’s a part late in the movie where the two are talking to their boss, Roderick, that is way too deep into spoiler territory to talk about, which is frustrating, because I really want to talk about how funny it is and how strong a moment it is. I literally stopped writing this review, just to watch that scene again.
Extras begin with an audio commentary track with the writer / director, Augustine Frizzell; one of the producers, Liz Cardenas; and the two stars, Maia Mitchell and Camila Morrone. It’s a fun listen and there’s lots of energy coming from the group. Art Imitates Life is a 12-minute making of featurette. There is also one deleted scene and 4 minutes of outtakes.
On a side note, Amazon has the film coming out on Blu-ray, but according to A24 it is only coming out on DVD. It’s Amazon. What are you going to do?
I’m not a big fan of Stoner Comedy, because too often the characters just get on my nerves. However, while the two leads in Never Goin’ Back are as dumb as they come, they also have moments of kindness and they are genuine friends throughout. Extras on the DVD are better than most limited releases have and it is certainly worth picking up.
Video on Demand
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The Movie
The Extras
The Verdict
Filed under: Video Review, Never Goin’ Back, Maia Mitchell, Kyle Mooney, Augustine Frizzell, Joel Allen, Camila Morrone, Liz Cardenas Franke, Atheena Frizzell, Marcus M. Mauldin, Kendal Smith, Matthew Holcom