{"id":28186,"date":"2013-07-10T02:47:36","date_gmt":"2013-07-10T09:47:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/?p=28186"},"modified":"2013-07-10T23:06:28","modified_gmt":"2013-07-11T06:06:28","slug":"the-kings-of-summer-jordan-vogt-roberts-2013-usa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/?p=28186","title":{"rendered":"The Kings of Summer (Jordan Vogt-Roberts, 2013): USA"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reviewed by Christopher Connor<\/a>. Viewed at the Metropolitan Riviera Theater.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Jordan Vogt-Roberts embarks on his feature length directorial debut with a coming-of-age story about three young boys who decide it\u2019s time to make it on their own and become men by leaving their families and building a makeshift house in the forest. While\u00a0occasionally\u00a0funny, and sometimes serious,\u00a0The Kings of Summer<\/em><\/a>\u00a0fails to make the big splash the director surely hoped for.<\/p>\n

Joe is sick of being a kid. He\u2019s really sick of it. Even at the age of 15, he\u2019s ready to be a man, especially when living under the roof of his oppressive father (Nick Offerman of\u00a0Parks and Recreation<\/em>) who only wants to make people as miserable as he is. His best friend, Patrick, also feels suffocated by his parents. It\u2019s not their bad attitude that\u2019s the reason for his hives, but instead it\u2019s their overbearing niceness. They also can\u2019t seem to realize that Patrick isn\u2019t a complete child anymore.<\/p>\n

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 \u201creal men\u201d. 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\u2019s off the wall behavior. Their idyllic new home seems fine and dandy until Joe\u2019s long time crush enters the picture and her eyes wander to Patrick, causing the boys\u2019 friendship to be tested. Living a completely independent life becomes increasingly difficult for them as things take an unpleasant turn.<\/p>\n

The Kings of Summer<\/em>\u00a0unfortunately 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\u2019t come off well and the randomly placed slow motion segments don\u2019t seem to help. There are times when the corky, awkward, dead pan humor of Biaggio becomes a little heavy handed. He\u2019s 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\u2019s being said is a punchline. That\u2019s really its only purpose and it\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

This theme of becoming men is stressed a lot throughout the movie. It\u2019s stressed so much, that there are strange jokes about gender and being gay. One jokes is of Biaggio admitting to Joe that he doesn\u2019t really feel like he has a gender. Joe is taken aback. When Biaggio asks if that\u2019s a bad thing, Joe responds, \u201cWell, it isn\u2019t good.\u201d Why not? Even if the movie is suggesting being a \u201cman\u201d isn\u2019t simply doing what you want whenever you want to, is it still necessary to fall into that strict gender binary of \u201cman\u201d and \u201cwoman\u201d. There can be shades of grey. Biaggio\u2019s perceived lack of gender is merely used as another punchline.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard to talk about this coming-of-age movie without drawing at least\u00a0some\u00a0<\/em>parallels to\u00a0Mud,<\/em>\u00a0another coming-of-age movie released some months before. Aside from both\u00a0<\/em>being focused on midwest towns and a rather similar scene in the third act,\u00a0Jeff Nichols\u2019\u00a0Mud<\/em>\u00a0looks 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\u00a0Mud<\/em>, The Kings of Summer<\/em>\u00a0isn\u2019t subtle in it\u2019s approach. Everything that is happening is explained. It begins to feel forced. The writer, Chris Galletta, makes sure it\u2019s 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\u2019s too afraid to commit to that idea. It\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

Granted, it\u2019s 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\u2019t seem\u00a0The Kings of Summer<\/em>\u00a0will last past the season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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\u2019s time to make it on their own and become men by leaving their families and building a makeshift house in the forest. While\u00a0occasionally\u00a0funny, and sometimes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1952,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-films"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1952"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28186"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28186\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}