SIFF Review: "The Kings of Summer"

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Parent Category: Film Festivals

Category: Reviews

Published on Friday, 31 May 2013 10:58

Written by Matt Oakes

"The Kings of Summer"
Directed by Jordan Vogt-Roberts
Starring Nick Robinson, Gabriel Basso, Moises Arias, Nick Offerman, Megan Mullally, Marc Evan Jackson, Craig Cackowski and Erin Moriarty
Comedy
93 Mins
R

Jordan Vogt-Roberts has cast his netinto a summer overflowing with coming-of-age stories with The Kings of Summer, a film just strange and fantastical enough to leave a mark. A lively mish-mash of novel spirit and borrowed plotting, Vogt-Roberts never quite gets a grasp on whether he wanted this to be more Huckleberry Finn or Y Tu Mama Tambien. It's got a little bit of both but doesn't quite indulge in the alluringly mystical environment as much as he should have.

Shambling through  spazzed-out and bone-dry comic tilts, The Kings of Summer packs enough laughs to overcome its eventual descent into melodrama where too much stock plot spoils the most intriguing aspects of the feature: three teenage boys trying to live in the wild.

Joe is our entrance to the film. Played by all-American Nick Robinson, Joe is almost too good looking for his pitiable social standing but we let it slide. Gabriel Basso (Super 8) plays Patrick, Joe's best friend, social circle equal and confidante. Tired of their overbearing parents and fed-up with their low standing in the social circuit, Joe and Patrick decide to run away from the ennui of their high school lives for a summer to build their own escapist woodland shanty.

Vagrancy has never looked this, well, cool. Joe, Patrick and where-did-he-come-from-Biaggio assemble a kick-ass house in the midst of seemingly enchanted woods, abandoning familiarity to live off the land.

Who is this Biaggio character, you ask? He's a short, funny looking thing, filled in by a left-field performance from Moises Arias, playing off a Napoleon Dynamite-level of awkward quirk. Although he's popping off some great one-liners left and right, his character makes no sense in the context of these relationships as he literally shows up out of the blue for little more than comic relief. Even with a hilarious presence, these unaccounted for logic gaps dig head-scratching rivets into the natural narrative arc and devalue the overall impact.

On the other side of the spectrum, Nick Offerman is no fool's gold. He's the real thing. Screenwriter Chris Galletta's words flow from Offerman's mouth like oily mead: bludgeoning yet perfect. Either Galletta has Offerman's idiosyncratic, manly-man, sardonic wit down flat or Vogt-Roberts let Offerman channel his inner Ron Swanson and riff off that. Regardless, his character works tremendously and his relationship with his son is hardhearted but emotionally nuanced. In Offerman, the comedy and drama shines.

Lacking the emotional depth of the Offerman-and-son relationship but ratcheting up a different breed of comedy, Megan Mullally and Marc Evan Jackson offer striking satire on the WASP family structure. However innocent their voyeurism is, they are a pair of parents so hands-on that they can't help themselves but to comment on every single detail of their son Patrick's life down to his wardrobe.

Out in the woods, things seem promising but a late second act shift towards a more schmaltzy and familiar path tilt the balance board into bathos. When Patrick and Joe's friendship is tested over a girl, there's a collective sigh. So I guess this is happening. This wringing of the cultural wash pool for teenage milestones doesn't destroy the feature but it robs it of its more original platform.

Remaining after the fall is the arresting scenery, even in the whirl of entropy these forested shots are tinted with childhood magic. As an audience, we're still entranced by the eden qualities of this place but it's lost the sparkle in their relationship-drunken eyes. In becoming "men" though, they lose the worth of this place.

Failing to see the forest for the trees, Vogt-Roberts had shoehorned a tired bros-over-hoes message into an otherwise trailblazing narrative. Following a first act that's solid gold, the film abandons offbeat wit for caged wisdom as conventional as it is predictable. Keeping the esoteric alive in characters like Biaggio and Offerman's Frank does keep our interest but cements the facts that characters and events in this world are weird and serendipitous for the sake of being weird and serendipitous.

When all is said and done, The Kings of Summer is gratifying escapism with solid laughs, choked out by its willingness to engage in the customary.

C+

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