Review of Never Goin' Back (2018) by David F — 13 Nov 2018
Why would you go back? So this is about a pair of teenage girls (Maia Mitchell, Camile Morrone). They're best friends and roommates in a shared rented house. When they decide to put up rent money in advance so they can go vacation on the beach, they plan on working a high number of waitressing shifts to make up for it.
With their lifestyle, what could possibly go wrong? Now I watched this very cold, so much so that I wasn't even 100% certain how it worked its way onto my queue. Knowing me, I probably heard a positive review, queued it, and then forgot about it.
With a current 5.8 rating on IMDb, I didn't really know what to expect. This is actually one of my favorite types of movies out there: the diamond in the rough. Now the angle that I most appreciated about this is that this is kind of a surreal comedy.
The lives that these two young girls are leading don't quite feel like they exist in the real world; it is fast and loose (but that's the way they like it), and while there are consequences, it feels like those repercussions should have happened long ago.
Even though I would probably not want to be friends with these sassy girls in the real world, I highly enjoyed watching their slice of life misadventures. It is nothing heavy, so the stakes aren't all that high, but being poor is a struggle, and I feel this is a theme that this movie successfully captures.
Sometimes a film doesn't have to be about the sweeping romance or the big promotion, sometimes it can focus on how you might not make rent if you don't show up for the job you hate. I love a short movie, and this is just barely 80 minutes when you subtract the end credits.
I would have even been happy with their antics going on even longer, but it is better to leave the audience wanting more than the other way around. The story moves quickly to the point that I never got bored with this or even tempted by distractions for that matter.
The offbeat humor is laugh out loud funny, and even though it does get raunchy at a couple of points, it puts in the work in the setup to earn that payoff (you'll know what I am talking about when you see it).
This is a delightful and weird little surprise, and I was not expecting it to be ranking with some of my favorites of the year.
This review of Never Goin' Back (2018) was written by David F on 13 Nov 2018.
Never Goin' Back has generally received positive reviews.
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