Mark Reviews Movies: NEVER GOIN' BACK

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Review by Mark Dujsik | August 9, 2018

You really want to like the pair of friends at the center of Never Goin' Back. They're two 16-year-old girls who, apparently, have dropped out of school in order to make lives for themselves. They scrape by with jobs at a local diner, which is just far enough away that they need to take the bus from a stop that, for its part, is just far enough away that they have to walk through the sweltering Texas heat. By the time they get on the bus, the girls' uniforms are soaked in sweat. You don't want to imagine how bad it would be if the bus didn't have air conditioning.

There are a lot of little details about the lives of these protagonists in writer/director Augustine Frizzell's screenplay. They're details that reinforce that, however irresponsible the girls might seem, they are trying.

As for why Angela (Maia Mitchell) and Jessie's (Camila Morrone) lives aren't quite living up to potential, the movie presents a constant battle between circumstances and character. Yes, they're irresponsible and occasionally lazy, and their goals in life don't seem to add up to much more than making sure they have rent and the other bills paid on time. There's also a lot more, though, such as how Jessie's older brother keeps getting himself—and, by extension, them—into trouble with his dreams of becoming a drug dealer, how they can't catch a break from a judgmental co-worker who tattles whenever they show up to work high, or how there's just too much temptation to drink and get stoned whenever they go to a party.

Frizzell seems to understand about halfway that Angela and Jessie's flaws contribute to a significant portion of their problems. Some of it, undoubtedly, is circumstantial, because Jessie isn't responsible for her brother/roommate Dustin's (Joel Allen) constant screw-ups. Knowing what kind of guy he is, though, why don't the two friends just find a different place to live? Yes, it would be irritating to attend a party where everyone is having a good time but you just want to use the washing machine to clean your work uniform, but do neither Angela nor Jessie see the warning label on that batch of cookies, which turn out to be infused with marijuana? If not, isn't it a little suspicious that the container is kept away in the home owner's private fridge?

We know that Frizzell can see the many errors of her characters' ways, because her screenplay repeatedly has the two protesting a bit too much about their specific circumstances, their general situation, and their overall bad luck. We can see how they create a lot of the chaos surrounding them, because they either make little but still poor decisions or hold back from putting in just enough effort to be good, right, or productive.

Ultimately, the movie really doesn't care who or what is to blame. It would rather take these characters and put them into situations of mounting comedic disaster. There's just enough within the story to make us think that Frizzell has more character-related concerns in mind, but in the end, it seems that the filmmaker lands on the protagonists' side, whether they actually learn anything or not.

It all begins with Angela booking a trip from their home of Fort Worth to the beaches of Galveston for Jessie's upcoming 17th birthday. Angela had to spend their half of the rent money to pay for the trip, but her plan is for the two to take on extra shifts at the diner to make up for it. Meanwhile, Dustin spends his half of the rent on the failed drug deal, and that botched business enterprise results in the pals winding up in jail and having their jobs put in jeopardy. Also, Jessie has a bad case of constipation, since she refused to use the toilet in her holding cell. This might be the first instance in the movies of the principle of Chekhov's gun being transplanted to a loaded digestive tract, since the movement of Jessie's bowels becomes a major plot point during the climax.

That's the brand of humor we get here. In a way, it's kind of a statement on Frizzell's part, that teenage girls can be just as gross, rowdy, and party-happy as their male counterparts. In that respect, one supposes, the movie succeeds. Angela and Jessie are, perhaps, even grosser, rowdier, and more obsessed with the thrills of alcohol and drugs than any man in this story. In a way, they're smarter with their attitudes and addictions than their male counterparts, too, and they don't possess the creepiness of Dustin's friend/roommate Brandon (Kyle Mooney), who works at a sandwich shop, or his boss, who does unspeakable things with a piece of bread after daring to call Jessie a "whore" at the local grocery store.

The entire movie seems to be founded on this sort of comparative thinking. Angela and Jessie are a mess, to be sure, but at least they're not as bad as everyone else here. In a way, that's fine, but it's also a low bar that Never Goin' Back sets for its characters, its humor, and its final assertion of progress.

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