Many of us have probably imagined what a high school do-over might look like. Maybe we’d make better choices. Maybe we’d get better grades. Maybe we’d finally talk to the person we spent four years quietly admiring from across the cafeteria. Maybe we’d avoid the mistakes that still occasionally pop into our heads decades later. High school occupies a strange place in our memories. As adults, I’m sure there are things you learned in high school you realize you have yet to use on your own, but there are also skills and knowledge you found missing after you graduated. Why bother teaching Trigonometry if you can’t file your own taxes?
The new Hulu comedy Never Change builds itself around that idea, but with a premise so ridiculous that it somehow circles back around to being intriguing. At some point in this film’s timeline, a law was apparently passed requiring students to complete an entire school year in order to graduate. When a tornado destroys a high school two weeks before graduation, one particular class never technically finishes those final days. Twenty years later, they’re legally required to return and complete those missing weeks or risk losing the diplomas they thought they already earned.
It’s a wonderfully absurd setup. Unfortunately, the film never figures out what to do with it. Never Change introduces a large ensemble cast almost immediately, but without ever establishing a true lead character. Rather than feeling like adults returning to a formative chapter of their lives, most of them simply feel like random adults collected from the street. We never get much sense of who stayed in town, who moved away, who built successful careers, who started families, who never left high school behind, or who couldn’t wait to forget it. The film constantly hints at stories that might be interesting but stumbles through quite a bit. For example, they open their time capsules early, and the film isn’t sure what level of funny it should go with, so one student had radioactive material, another had Smirnoff Ice, while a third had a marriage license. It feels like shots in the dark. There is a funny side plot with a teacher trying really hard to flirt with her adult students, but this block is old enough that one of them should be a teacher. Statistically speaking, think back to your graduating class. Someone is teaching, right? At least one person you graduated with is teaching, possibly at the school they went to. Yet another missed opportunity.
One of the stranger decisions involves recreating the class’s original 2008 high school play under the supervision of their clinically unhinged former theater instructor, played by Topher Grace. He joins Anna Gasteyer and Zach Cherry as the most recognizable names in the cast, which otherwise consists largely of performers chosen for their comedic backgrounds.
The film occasionally reminded me of Christmas Eve at Miller’s Point, another ensemble piece more interested in capturing a feeling than telling a conventional story. Here, that feeling is supposed to be the awkward experience of reliving high school as an adult. The problem is that most of these characters seem remarkably unintelligent. There is one character positioned as the smart student, yet the movie also suggests the entire class is failing. It’s difficult to understand who these people are supposed to be or why this situation affects them so deeply.
Things become even stranger with subplots involving a serial killer and an alien. Neither storyline lands, and both contribute to a movie that already struggles to find a clear focus. While Never Change seems to aspire toward the chaotic energy of Wet Hot American Summer, it ends up feeling closer to Theater Camp, albeit far less successful despite having a premise that should have played directly to my interests.
If I had been pitching this concept, I would have gone in a completely different direction. The premise practically begs for a cast filled with actors who defined teen movies in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Imagine Freddie Prinze Jr., Jason Biggs, Neve Campbell, Alicia Silverstone, and dozens of other familiar faces returning to high school decades later. The nostalgia would have been built directly into the concept. Instead, Never Change wants to trade on nostalgia without fully embracing it, leaving the audience disconnected from the very thing the film seems to believe it is celebrating.
The movie premiered at Tribeca before quickly making its way to Hulu. It also includes audio description narrated by Tansy Alexander. While there are moments where the description helps clarify visual information, the film itself is often so cluttered that the track can only do so much. There is simply too much happening, much of it without purpose.
What’s most disappointing is how obvious a winner this concept should have been. The idea of forcing adults to return and finish high school is rich with comedic and emotional possibilities. Yet Never Change rarely feels interested in exploring what high school actually meant to these characters or how they’ve changed since leaving it behind.
Where are the jocks, the geeks, the burnouts, the overachievers? The Breakfast Club understood that those archetypes endure because they reflect recognizable experiences. Never Change never finds that authenticity. It doesn’t feel like adults confronting who they once were. It doesn’t feel like a second chance. More often, it feels like a group of confused adults wandering through a school during parents’ night.
Never Change takes a premise that practically writes itself and somehow still can’t make it work. The result is a comedy that’s occasionally amusing but ultimately frustrating, a film that asks us to revisit high school without ever giving us a reason to care about who these people were in the first place.
Sometimes change is a good thing, and there’s a lot I would like to change about this.
Rotten: 5.3/10
