As the sons of media mogul Peter Chernin, the CEO of Fox for more than a decade, suffice it to say that brothers Dave and John Chernin grew up in an environment of privilege, wealth, and status. Some things are pretty much the same, though, no matter who you are. In promoting their new Netflix comedy Incoming, for example, there’s a particularly formative memory from the brothers’ teenage years they share that many people can probably relate to: It’s the time their next-door neighbor threw a rager.
“I remember me and Dave sitting by a window with the lights off just looking into the backyard at this raging high school house party next door, thinking that is the craziest thing I’ve ever seen,” John Chernin said in an interview with Netflix’s Tudum.
Their new film — a throwback to the era of R-rated comedies like American Pie, before big-budget superhero movies more or less took over Hollywood — is about one such party and one such night for a group of high school freshman. They’re kids who are still in that stage of life where anything can happen, and where something as trivial as a house party can take on outsized significance.
And since the Chernins, who previously wrote for It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, were getting older and thus farther away from that period of their own lives, they decided to turn the notepads they’ve been jotting down their movie ideas in for the last 15 years into the actual high school movie they always dreamed about making. Never mind that the major studios have basically stopped making these sorts of comedies anymore, partly over evolving sensibilities about humor.
“We landed on the title of Incoming and realized, ‘Oh, this is four freshmen having this weird early-life identity crisis,’” Dave Chernin said. “That kind of became the engine for the story.”
Incoming hits the streaming giant on Aug. 23. The It’s Always Sunny connection is worth mentioning, by the way, because the brothers admitted to basically “begging” Kaitlin Olson to play the part of a mother in the film. And while I recognize the kid who played Hugo in Apple TV+’s Acapulco, the cast here is mostly filled with fresh faces aside from the likes of Olson and Bobby Cannavale.
Incoming’s logline is simple and straight to the point: “Four freshmen are faced with the greatest challenge of their young lives: Their first high school party.”
One thing that stood out to me while watching the trailer is that not a single teenager, near as I could tell, ever has a phone in their hand. Which tells you, all by itself, that this story is kind of an artifact from another time. Also, mega props to the filmmakers for making a movie about teenagers — and casting actual teenagers to play those roles. What a novel concept.
