It is the first day of high school for Benj (Mason Thames), a sensitive teenager who is looking to reinvent himself at his new school.  Ridiculed by his sister Alyssa (Ali Gallo) over breakfast after she caught him fantasizing about her best friend and sophomore crush, Bailey (Isabella Ferreira), his first day is already off to a rough start.  Reuniting with his friends, Connor (Raphael Alejandro), Eddie (Ramon Reed), and Danah (Bardia Seiri), they quickly begin to lay plans for how they will make the next four years the best of their lives.  Opportunity quickly presents itself when Danah secures them invites to his older brother’s house party, but the crew quickly realizes high school is a whole different beast than middle school. 

For Netflix, writer and director team Dave and John Chernin deliver Incoming, a 91-minute, aspirationally raunchy, coming of age comedy.  With a history in television, the film seems a natural fit for the team’s first foray into features since the streamer has been revealed to have a bit of a “style guide” for filmmakers they are not attaching awards aspirations to.  As one brother follows Netflix’s checklist and the other follows the genre checklist, it is not surprising that the film breaks little new ground, and while that is putting far too much weight of expectation on this film’s shoulders, it barely conjures up more than a half-hearted chuckle across its entire runtime and to be a little harsh, it is barely a film.  

Incoming follows the latest class of CW freshmen who at least do not look like they are approaching 30, but certainly do not look 14 either.  It is a low-hanging critique but an unavoidable one as the actors are not believable as their characters age. Since so much of the humor is based on the adult situations these children find themselves in, the jokes simply do not work if we do not believe their ages.  It is a real shame because by and large the four boys handle their lines well – even though the direction fails them in adding much variety to their delivery – and they are not self-conscious in front of Ricardo Diaz’s lens as they navigate the perils of puberty and throw tantrums when they do not get their way.  The lack of depth can almost be excused here as, again, there is no weight of expectation on this film to deliver much more than background noise to scroll through your phone, but as an audience, we should demand more respect for our time and our subscription dollars than what is being delivered to us. 

The strangest thing about this film beyond the typical unsupervised McMansion parties that are always meticulously chaotic is the overall world that the filmmakers are building here.  It is not trying to be a period piece and by and large, the setting is not that important to the narrative, but because there are no rules or guiding principles here, every brand feels like Netflix is simply cashing in on some extra ad revenue.  The film is most securely structured around getting in these brand names – Amazon Prime, Postmates, Tesla, Uber – that it makes sense why the story is so thin. Incoming is more of an extended commercial than an actual film.  Further, it is almost all of these “disrupting,” tech bro companies that are so far out of touch with what actual real people want out of life that it forces what little narrative thread there is into beguiling throes.  Taco Bell is the only brick-and-mortar brand mentioned in the entire film, and it’s the only one that actually tracks with how the characters interact with it.  Beyond this, the film prominently features a 14-year-old Katy Perry song – a song old enough to be a freshman in high school itself – and while the needle drop fits, albeit a little on the nose, it just goes to show how continually out of touch these filmmakers truly are. 

Incoming is working in the tradition of the high school comedy forged in the 80s and 90s and honed in the aughts, but it is content at simply copying the elements that made these films touchstones for their audiences instead of creating actual, memorable moments. Teenagers at sleepovers will not be scrolling to find this film nor will it be likely that they find it really speaking to them in any way.  The film does not demean them but it is not celebrating the generation nor is it focused enough to be reaching out to them in some subconscious way that would open it up for rediscovery and reclamation some years down the line. It is just a hollow and vapid effort that offers little to anyone who happens to be served this “next up” by the almighty algorithm.