The Kings of Summer (Jordan Vogt-Roberts, 2013): USA

Reviewed by Christopher Connor. Viewed at the Metropolitan Riviera Theater.

Jordan Vogt-Roberts embarks on his feature length directorial debut with a coming-of-age story about three young boys who decide it’s time to make it on their own and become men by leaving their families and building a makeshift house in the forest. While occasionally funny, and sometimes serious, The Kings of Summer fails to make the big splash the director surely hoped for.

Joe is sick of being a kid. He’s really sick of it. Even at the age of 15, he’s ready to be a man, especially when living under the roof of his oppressive father (Nick Offerman of Parks and Recreation) who only wants to make people as miserable as he is. His best friend, Patrick, also feels suffocated by his parents. It’s not their bad attitude that’s the reason for his hives, but instead it’s their overbearing niceness. They also can’t seem to realize that Patrick isn’t a complete child anymore.

After a kegger gone wrong, Joe stumbles into a secluded part of the forest with his new strange buddy, Biaggio. Realizing he found what he thinks to be paradise, he enlists Patrick and Biaggio to build a house there so they can finally run away from home and become “real men”. After a surprisingly quick montage of them building their ramshackle home, they are ready to grow out their sad excuses for beards and live off the land, or if that fails, shop at the local Boston Market for food. They spend their time throwing sticks, banging on things, slicing things in half, running around, jumping off things, swimming, and being weirded out by Biaggio’s off the wall behavior. Their idyllic new home seems fine and dandy until Joe’s long time crush enters the picture and her eyes wander to Patrick, causing the boys’ friendship to be tested. Living a completely independent life becomes increasingly difficult for them as things take an unpleasant turn.

The Kings of Summer unfortunately falls a bit short of being a great movie. It jumps back and forth between being a corky coming-of-age comedy and an existential search for oneself. The blending of the two doesn’t come off well and the randomly placed slow motion segments don’t seem to help. There are times when the corky, awkward, dead pan humor of Biaggio becomes a little heavy handed. He’s weird. We get it. One-liners spill from his mouth simply to make the crowd laugh, and it seems they laugh because they know what’s being said is a punchline. That’s really its only purpose and it’s what moves this movie to an easy crowd pleaser. It also helps detract from the serious, semi-profound aspect the movie tries to simultaneously take on. The kids are going through a transition in their life where they want to be independent. They are learning about themselves and how they fit into the world. They test their relationships with each other. They want to be men.

This theme of becoming men is stressed a lot throughout the movie. It’s stressed so much, that there are strange jokes about gender and being gay. One jokes is of Biaggio admitting to Joe that he doesn’t really feel like he has a gender. Joe is taken aback. When Biaggio asks if that’s a bad thing, Joe responds, “Well, it isn’t good.” Why not? Even if the movie is suggesting being a “man” isn’t simply doing what you want whenever you want to, is it still necessary to fall into that strict gender binary of “man” and “woman”. There can be shades of grey. Biaggio’s perceived lack of gender is merely used as another punchline.

It’s hard to talk about this coming-of-age movie without drawing at least some parallels to Mud, another coming-of-age movie released some months before. Aside from both being focused on midwest towns and a rather similar scene in the third act, Jeff Nichols’ Mud looks at the world of two young boys helping a wanted man. We see the world through their eyes, and we see what happens when that world is turned upside down. Perceptions change. An innocence is lost. But unlike Mud, The Kings of Summer isn’t subtle in it’s approach. Everything that is happening is explained. It begins to feel forced. The writer, Chris Galletta, makes sure it’s spelled out for us. We can tell that the subject matter is important to the director, and that these experiences are shaping the lives of these boys. But it seems as if he’s too afraid to commit to that idea. It’s not embraced, and with the corkiness, throwaway jokes, and the poor mesh of styles, something is left behind. Nichols seemed to have a better grasp on his direction, and because of that a more mature movie came forth.

Granted, it’s not easy to make a movie. This was Jordan Vogt-Roberts first feature length film, and with all the above said, it was a crowd pleaser. It may not have had the depth and subtleness it was reaching for, but it was a decent first attempt. There was something there under the surface. Although not the worst, it doesn’t seem The Kings of Summer will last past the season.

About this entry

You’re currently reading “The Kings of Summer (Jordan Vogt-Roberts, 2013): USA,” an entry on Student Film Reviews

Published:
07.10.13 / 2am
Category:
Films