Joel on Film

At least Never Change! has a premise with a lot of comedic potential. The idea behind John Reynolds’s screenplay is that the 2008 graduating class from North Meadows High must return to their school to reclaim diplomas that, following a piece of state legislation introduced to fund better education and teacher salaries, have been revoked. It’s a general rule of comedy that anything can be funny, even a sobering idea like this one, but director Marty Schousboe’s movie has one massive, hard-to-miss problem: It’s not very funny.

The film certainly tries to be, since in spite of the above description of its set-up, this is a three-jokes-per-minute alleged laugh riot, featuring an ensemble of actors who probably know exactly what they’re doing with this material. Reynolds also stars Sunny Football, which is presumably the name on his birth certificate, and Sofia Black-D’Elia is Katie Cartwright, with whom Sonny enjoyed a sweaty romance back in the day before circumstances forced them apart. Now, she’s getting married to Mark (Rudy Pankow), a “nice guy” who is actually about as insecure as they come but whom she claims to adore.

All these characters, by the way, are introduced with some onscreen text informing us of their names, their GPA upon first graduating and their general interests during high school. One supposes that this is a nice shortcut to avoid any actual character development or definition, because neither of those things happens for anybody here until a slight turn toward sincerity between Sunny and Katie. Even that turn sort of comes out of nowhere and is almost certainly not earned by either the filmmakers or the actors (though Black-D’Elia is the closest thing to pretty good among this cast).

Once the plot finds them back at school, where Principal Nadler (Ana Gasteyer) and the schoolteachers are dreading the return of so many fully grown adults in their midst on a regular basis, the movie really has one thing to do with them, which is to prove that they have not, in fact, grown up at all. By virtue of being the protagonists, one supposes that Sunny and Katie are a bit better off in this story than their support, but it really is dispiriting to see actors trying to be as funny as possible, while clearly struggling with the big pile of nothing they’ve been given. The students range from impotently angry to uncontrollably horny (that goes for one of the teachers, too, by the way), and that’s about it in terms of getting to know them.

What follows is an onslaught of crude humor that quickly wears us down, desensitizes us to the supposed raunch and gets old long after we’ve lost interest in finding out just how far the filmmakers are willing to go to get a laugh. Instead of throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks, it’s more like Schousboe aimed a cannon at the wall, stuffed every joke inside the bore and fired it at close range, disintegrating the wall and everything else along with it. Not a single joke or gag is really worth singling out, just as only one member of the cast (Jo Firestone, as the principal’s daughter and valedictorian, who plots to be with Gary Richardson’s advertising executive Curtis by the end of this reunion) is really worthy of mention.

Okay, a few other things might be worthy, such as how Topher Grace plays a drama teacher and alumnus of the school, whose old play (about a serial killer who once stalked the town) is resurrected under the conditions of the class coming back, and how Matt Barats plays a bona fide creep (last name “Clinger,” no less) who still pines for Katie in ways that become increasingly dangerous to his health and the wellbeing of people around him. These are the closest thing the movie has to ongoing jokes, though, because Never Change! is otherwise wholly devoted to randomness, repetition and ribaldry.

Rating: *½ (out of ****)