August 27, 2018 2 min to read

Never Goin' Back

A refreshingly simple teen comedy that for once, explores friendship earnestly instead of romance. All 17-year old dropouts Angela and Jessie wanted was a weekend at the beach.

by Zach Saul

Never Goin’ Back is a hilarious story of rebellion, hardship, and female friendship. We encounter Angela (Maia Mitchell) and Jessie (Camila Morrone) in the doldrums of summer in south Texas, doing their best to get by, and experience youth when they can. Hoping to surprise her best friend, Angela decides to surprise Jessie with a trip to the Galveston for her seventeenth birthday. However, there’s a catch: Angela gambled big by using their rent money to pay for the trip and hoping to make up the money by any means necessary before the trip. Angela and Jessie are tremendously vulgar and impulsive, but they’re also unwaveringly kind and supportive to one another amidst both financial and intestinal troubles. Camila Monroe and Maia Mitchell are tremendously funny, energetic actresses who have palpable chemistry and work hard to drag you into their characters seventeen-year-old minds. The girls land everywhere from a juvenile detention cell, to their boss’ shit-list, to the broom closet of a sandwich shop, but never seem to waiver in spirit or resolution. Watching Never Goin Back it’s easy to forget these are two seventeen-year-olds who dropped out of school, and judge their selfish or short sighted decisions. However, keeping in mind Angela and Jessie were robbed of their youth, never having responsible behavior modeled for them are remarkably resilient and mature. Augustine Frizzell who wrote and directed Never Goin’ Back said in an interview that she wanted to insert comedy into an autobiographical story that too often was more dramatic than funny.

A lot of the humor in Never Goin’ Back comes from the absurdity of mundane things most of us take for granted; like having a functioning door, running water, a shower, or a private bathroom. Late in the movie while laying on her bed, Jessie (Camilla Morrone) morbidly jokes that having to worry about creepy perverts stealing your underwear at the laundromat is a uniquely female problem. To their credit, instead of wallowing in misery Angela and Jessie put unwavering faith in each other in these moments. On multiple occasions the girls use the perverted men in their lives to hoodwink their way out or trouble, turning weakness into strength. Frizzell’s movie wants to remind us that a strange thing happens to people when they have nothing to lose: they become dangerous and unstoppable forces against the odds.

The Good: Never Goin’ Back is one of the funnier movies of 2018, and Camila Morrone and Maia Mitchell are equal parts hilarious and endearing rebels. The tone of Never Goin Back stays light throughout, but it’s obvious there’s a dark and more serious backbone to Augustine Frizzell’s script. The jokes have an added bite to them because of the hardships facing Angela and Jessie, and when the deck gets stacked so high against them their only option is to laugh at the absurdity of their lives.

The Bad: There’s moments throughout the movie when Never Goin’ Back tiptoes back and forth across the gross/funny line, and the eventual payoff in which Angela and Jessie confront Brandon’s perverted boss veers a bit far into the gross territory.