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Keith L. Williams, Jacob Tremblay and Brady Noon star in Good Boys, available on Crave.Ed Araquel/Universal Pictures

Before you turn on your television, iPad or laptop this weekend and drown in movie options, The Globe and Mail’s Barry Hertz presents three streaming bets that are worth your coveted downtime – even though they might make you miss the theatre more than you already do.

Good Boys, Crave: Your enjoyment of this past summer’s Good Boys may depend on how much you’ve already seen of Good Boys. If, for instance, you’ve watched 2007′s Superbad, then you’ve already seen a good deal of the same friends-forever themes and ultra-horny comedy that Good Boys mines, albeit aged down about five years here to Grade 6. But just because you’ve seen this particular brand of pint-sized vulgarity before doesn’t make it much less enjoyable here, especially if you’ve spent the past month cooped up with your very own junior-sized hellion.

Plus: Canadian Jacob Tremblay works hard to shake off any precocious typecasting that previously caged him, and his fellow lead and lewd co-stars Brady Noon and Keith L. Williams charm with distressing ease. All that, and you get a pretty good and funny cover of Foreigner’s I Want to Know What Love Is, set to a crude children’s reworking of the musical Rock of Ages, featuring pixie-stick-powder cocaine. And no one, certainly, has ever seen that before. One word of caution: Just because this film stars 10-year-old boys does not mean you should entrust it with Zoom-call babysitting duties for your own 10-year-old boys.

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Michelle Williams and Kirsten Dunst star in Dick, streaming on Amazon Prime Video.Columbia Pictures

Dick, Amazon Prime Video: And now we go back to low-brow comedy, although with a high-brow conception. Released in 1999 and promptly ignored, director Andrew Fleming’s political-satire-in-teen-comedy-clothing has slowly but steadily gained a cult following, thanks to its delightfully prickly script, two sunny and smart lead performances from Kristen Dunst and Michelle Williams, and a supporting cast that was ridiculously stacked with comedy superstars both past (Dan Hedaya, Teri Garr), present (Dave Foley, Bruce McCulloch, Jim Breuer) and future (Will Ferrell, Ryan Reynolds).

Editor’s note: (April 16, 2020): This column originally listed Howards End; at press time, it was no longer available on Netflix Canada.

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