What has the potential to become the surprise hit of the
summer is director Jordan Vogt-Roberts’s first full-length feature film, The Kings of Summer.
The Kings of Summer begins chronicling
the annoying and mundane lives of its teenage protagonist, Joe, and his best
friend Patrick. Joe has just about had
it with his father—played cleverly by Parks
and Recreation’s Nick Offerman—with whom he has had a destructive
relationship since his mother died. And
Patrick is just as fed up with his parents, played by the hilarious Megan
Mullally and Marc Evan Jackson, who are both painfully relateable.
In
hopes of, at least temporarily, escaping from their parents’ overbearing
grasps—a frustration portrayed very accurately by the film—the heedless Joe and
Patrick flee to the woods and build their own house, mostly constructed of
stolen parts. As they humorously try to
survive in a forest with a close proximity to suburban Midwestern neighborhoods,
the two boys, plus their new oddball friend Biaggo played by Moises Arias, encounter
difficulties along the way. We also
catch glimpses of the parents’ search for their sons while the same question
arises several times: How long will Joe and Patrick be able to last living this
way?
While
the movie’s premise requires the audience to provide a willing suspension of
disbelief that three teenagers could build a pseudo-reliable two-story house on
their own, its execution is impressive because their experiences in the woods
are strikingly realistic. The script also
does a terrific job of capturing adolescence without the direction of parents
and it is blisteringly funny to boot, with some of the best lines being given
to the parents and the short, quirky Biaggo.
Also notable for a dramedy of
this sort is the direction, which proves to be poignant when it has to be,
light when it should be, and honest the entire hour and a half. The director controls his actors just the
right amount since they get the job done but their mannerisms, their delivery,
all feels very natural, especially from the scene-stealer Megan Mullally who is
so embarrassingly funny to her son that it hurts to watch.
The Kings of Summer is, at its core, a friendship and coming-of-age
story that warns against coming of age too soon, skillfully combining humor
with emotion, yielding an honest crowd-pleaser with a whole lot of laughs.
