Butler's Cinema Scene

Maia Mitchell,Camila Morrone

“NEVER GOIN’ BACK” My rating: B- (Opens Aug. 17 at the Screenland Armour)

85 minutes | MPAA rating: R

“Never Goin’ Back” is Romy & Michele-meet-Ferris Bueller…if Romy, Michelle and Ferris were majorly into weed and cocaine.

Writer/director Augustine Frizzle’s debut is a female-centric stoner comedy. It often reminds of the rambling examinations of adolescence pioneered by Richard Linklater in films like “Dazed and Confused.” This is a good thing.

Our dubious heroines,  Angela and Jessie (Maia Mitchell, Camila Morrone),  are high school dropouts who waitress in a Fort Worth diner and share a house with Jessie’s older brother Dustin (Joel Allen), a numbskull who wants to become a major player in the drug trade but really hasn’t a clue.

The girls must also contend with yet another roomie, the awkwardly lustful Brandon (“SNL’s” Kyle Mooney).

As the film begins Angela surprises Jessie with the announcement that they are going to celebrate the latter’s birthday with a road trip to the beach-side wonders of Galveston. To reserve their motel room Angela has spent all their rent money; she says they’ll make it up by working extra shifts at the restaurant.

Of course it doesn’t quite work out that way. “Never Goin’ Back” follows the cocky, brash pair in the week leading up to their big trip. They’ll be lucky if they make it to the city limits.

In short order their house is robbed, they get sent to juvie for drug possession, go nuts at a blowout with their old h.s. buddies and get into trouble at work.

There’s a running gag about constipation.

None of this adds up to much; by film’s end we’re still wondering if they’re going to make it to Galveston.

But it’s in the telling that Frizzle and her young players find their voice. “Never Goin'” is an explosion of youthful brio, antiestablishment cockiness and good-natured nihilism.

Jessie and Angela’s story could be framed as a cautionary tale, but Frizzle isn’t having any of that. They may be irresponsible and under-educated, they may spend too much time getting wasted, but the girls are devoted to one another and for all their hedonistic excesses they come off as innocents.

One of the film’s ongoing conceits is that the two are pure jailbait, yet they appear not to be sexually active — unless it’s with each other. Frizzle’s screenplay sidesteps that issue.

| Robert W. Butler