His pal Thor (Brady Noon) has other things on his mind, such as struggling to suppress his passion for musical theatre (this could be a metaphor for something, though I can’t think what). Lucas (Keith L. Williams), who is physically able to pass for a college student, is the most innocent of all: he loves rules, Jesus and the card game Magic: The Gathering, and suffers from a compulsive need to tell the truth.

His honesty proves a liability when the three embark on a complicated series of escapades, launched when Max is invited to a “kissing party” to be attended by the popular kids at school including his crush Brixlee (Millie Davis). With the reluctant help of the others, Max sets out to learn what kissing really entails, using a drone to spy on his teenage neighbour Hannah (Molly Gordon) and her friend Lily (Midori Francis), who soon realise what’s happening and seek revenge.

Some of this is fun and inventive, some of it repetitive and feeble, especially the heavy emphasis on the naivety of the protagonists and the hopelessness of their attempts at cool. Contrary to expectations, the title is not ironic: like the heroines of the recent Booksmart, which Good Boys recalls on many levels, these really are “good” kids rather than rebels aiming to stir up trouble.

The same can be said of Stupnitsky and co-writer Lee Eisenberg: the strategy of following teen movie formula while lowering the characters’ ages is a way of courting edginess while playing it safe. Ben and company can talk about sex but can’t have it, can steal drugs but can’t take them and can swear their heads off while barely knowing what the words mean.

It’s not surprising the leads seem a little constrained — accomplished young actors rather than actual children given the freedom to horse around. Some of the best moments belong to supporting cast members such as Francis, who shows a knack for deadpan insolence in the manner of Aubrey Plaza.

Best of all is 11-year-old Izaac Wang as Soren, the tiny but totally self-assured social arbiter of the sixth grade, a character Stupnitsky and Eisenberg might have conceived as a villain, except they can’t bring themselves to give him his comeuppance.

The standard, explicit messages about accepting change and being yourself are not very convincing, especially in the mouths of characters who can’t be thought to have “come of age” quite yet. The real project of the film seems to be happening on a more submerged level: perhaps it’s not really about childhood at all, but a response to the intuition that traditional models of masculinity have passed their use-by date and must be rebuilt from the ground up.

The irony is that as desperate as the heroes are to seem adult, their genuinely mature qualities are the ones they’ve had all along: compassion, a sense of responsibility, the frank affection they express towards each other.

Yet the film also retains a streak of genuine irresponsibility, for better or worse, especially considering many kids are bound to see it whether it’s made for them or not. The most unsettling scene has nothing to do with sex: the heroes take turns to run across a highway, dodging heavy, fast-moving traffic. On screen, major disaster is averted, but it only takes one impressionable child in the audience to decide that the challenge looks like fun.