As stoner comedy duos go, Angela and Jessie aren’t nearly as famous as Harold and Kumar or Cheech and Chong. But the main characters of writer-director Augustine Frizzell’s underrated 2018 film “Never Goin’ Back” deserve a place alongside those stoner-comedy icons, and their movie is one of the funniest, most entertaining entries in the subgenre over the past 20 years.
I was lucky enough to catch “Never Goin’ Back” during its brief and extremely limited theatrical run, and it immediately earned a place alongside my favorite stoner movies. The plot is classic stoner comedy fare, as teenage high school dropouts and suburban diner waitresses Angela (Maia Mitchell) and Jessie (Camila Morrone) encounter a series of obstacles in their quest for a simple but seemingly unattainable goal (a weekend at the beach).
Many of those obstacles are the result of their own inability to avoid getting inebriated, but they’re so good-natured and upbeat that it’s hard to blame them for any missteps. They’re just a joy to spend time with, as they freak out about various setbacks and unconditionally support each other in their modest ambitions. “Never Goin’ Back” is now streaming on Tubi, so anyone can have the joy of hanging out with Angela and Jessie for free.
‘Never Goin’ Back’ follows a dependable stoner comedy format
From the moment “Never Goin’ Back” begins, it’s clear that Angela and Jessie have the same kind of positive yet crude relationship as other famous duos in the subgenre. Angela wakes Jessie up with giddy news about a surprise she’s planned for Jessie’s upcoming 17th birthday, but not before drawing a penis on the side of Jessie’s face.
Even the sweet, thoughtful gift is totally irresponsible: Angela has spent the pair’s rent money on a vacation getaway at the beach in nearby Galveston, Texas, and the only way that they’ll be able to afford to stay in their house is if they work every available shift at their diner jobs for the next week.
Of course, these two are not capable of staying focused long enough to make that happen, although to be fair, much of what befalls them is out of their control. Plenty of blame falls on Jessie’s even more irresponsible older brother Dustin (Joel Allen), an inept small-time criminal who’s “not smart enough to be a drug dealer,” as Jessie puts it. It’s not clear what happened to Jessie and Dustin’s parents, but Dustin appears to be Jessie’s legal guardian while she’s still underage, and Jessie and Angela share a house with him and fellow loser Brandon (Kyle Mooney).
Thanks to Dustin’s shady dealings, Angela and Jessie end up spending two days in juvenile detention and missing their shifts at work, making them even more desperate to put enough money together to not end up without a place to live. Although those stakes seem high, Angela and Jessie approach their efforts with the same urgency as Harold and Kumar’s attempt to get to White Castle, and that keeps “Never Goin’ Back” goofy and low-key.
‘Never Goin’ Back’ deserves its place among the funniest stoner comedies
Frizzell keeps the jokes coming, even at Angela and Jessie’s lowest points, and Mitchell and Morrone have great chemistry as the inseparable best friends. So much of stoner humor is about oblivious or unexpected reactions, and Mitchell and Morrone can make even the most basic interactions into hilarious set pieces just with their body language and facial expressions.
One of the funniest moments in the movie involves their stoned fixation on pancakes, with the camera lingering on the unremarkable diner staple as Michael Bolton’s “How Am I Supposed to Live Without You” plays on the soundtrack
Angela and Jessie are not the most sophisticated thinkers, but there’s a certain purity to their humble pleasures. All they want out of life, as they describe it, is to see some dolphins, smoke some weed, and eat some donuts. Frizzell clearly admires their outlook, and “Never Goin’ Back” is a loving tribute to these exuberant teenage girls. It’s a rare stoner movie from a female perspective, and Frizzell centers their unique point of view without making them just a gender-swapped version of male stoner archetypes.
It’s a shame that “Never Goin’ Back” turned out to be an anomaly in the careers of its primary creative team, who haven’t worked on anything similar in subsequent years. But if it can build up the cult following of other once-maligned stoner comedies, then maybe we’ll get to hang out with Angela and Jessie again someday. For now, this offbeat odyssey provides more than enough laughs to keep revisiting, in any state of mind.
“Never Goin’ Back” is now streaming on Tubi.
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