Synopsis
Angela and Jessie are best friends intent on taking a wild beach trip, but when their roommate loses all their money in a drug scam, the girls—blissfully stoned—go to increasingly daring and absurd lengths to get it back.
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Cast
- Maia MitchellAngela
- Camila MorroneJessie
- Kyle MooneyBrandon
- Joel AllenDustin
- Kendal SmithTony
- Matthew HolcombRyan
- Liz CardenasNeighbor
- Michelle SherrillProstitute
- Julian HilliardBoy at Diner
- Jennifer PilarcikMom at Diner
Recommendations
- 75
IndieWire
Less moment-to-moment funny than committed to a sustained pitch of devilish glee, Never Goin’ Back couches its silliness in a credible milieu of American malaise. The women may never understand how they might find a better place, but the movie makes the case that their unending commitment to getting there might be good enough. - 70
Variety
Inspired at least in part by stunts Frizzell pulled when she was her characters’ age, this raucous parade of humiliation and embarrassment packs all the appeal of an outrageous anecdote hilariously retold by someone who can scarcely believe they ever did something so stupid. - 70
Village Voice
Writer-director Augustine Frizzell, making her feature directorial debut, is attuned to the giddy intimacies of female friendship, and Mitchell and Morrone are a charismatic pair. - 70
The New York Times
By rights, Never Goin’ Back should be a chore to sit through. The jokes are dated, the behavior tasteless and the setups tired. Yet the movie has a ramshackle charm that’s due entirely to its vivacious leads, whose mutual devotion and easy, unlabeled sexuality feels endearingly innocent. - 68
TheWrap
Never Goin’ Back, which Frizzell has admitted is in ways an honest, personal reckoning with incidents in her own fumbling adolescence, has something many comedies simply fail to care about: a spark-filled joie de vivre about the stupidity of youth that lifts it above many more cynically crass (and typically male) examples of the genre. - 63
Movie Nation
A scruffy, raunchy and random farce. - 63
Slant Magazine
Writer-director Augustine Frizzell's film is funny and surprisingly tender, if at times frustratingly uneven. - 58
Film Journal International
Marking her feature debut, Frizzell’s direction is competent, but her screenplay, which is semi-autobiographical, is a series of vignettes that narrowly add up to a narrative.
