*This is a reprint of my review from FilmFest DC*
Debuting back at Sundance (where I unfortunately passed it over) under the title of Toy's House, The Kings of Summer was met with the sort of wildly enthusiastic, hyperbolic praise that festivals tend to inspire in critics. Comparisons to The Gooniesand Moonrise Kingdom were tossed around; high praise that only occasionally turns out to be remotely accurate. But in the case of Jordan Vogt-Roberts' delightful, refreshing debut feature, the adoration heaped upon it is completely deserved.
In contrast to another recent festival darling, The Way Way Back, there's very little that is predictable about The Kings of Summer. The film features a vastly talented comedy ensemble with Nick Offerman, his wife Megan Mullally, and Alison Brie, but they are merely great supporting characters to the impressive leads. Nick Robinson is Joe Toy; Gabriel Basso is his best friend Patrick; and Moises Arias is the mercurial Biaggio; and they give the film its true emotional center, along with providing a number of huge laughs. The film starts in odd fashion, as we see two of the boys drumming rhythmically on a large pipe deep in the woods, while Biaggio breakdances like a fool on top of it.
We're then transported to a month earlier, when a combination of events would lead the three adolescent boys to do something drastic. For Joe and Patrick, living in the same home as their parents has become intolerable. Ever since his mother died, Joe has found life difficult thanks to his miserable, domineering father, Frank. Offerman plays the jaded old man not unlike his Ron Swanson character from NBC's Parks & Recreation. His droll, deadpan sarcasm honed to a razor sharp edge, he's both hilarious and a little deadly at the same time. Frank has already driven away his daughter Heather (Alison Brie), and it looks like Joe may soon follow her.
Patrick, on the other hand, is feeling the pressure from his well-meaning but overbearing parents (Megan Mullally and Marc Evan Johnson), who nitpick every facet of his life. They're driving him a little nuts, to the point where he's actually breaking out in hives just from being around them. At the same time, girls are starting to enter the picture, adding fuel to an already combustible situation. When Joe's secret crush Kelly (the adorable Erin Moriarty) invites him to her much-older boyfriend's party, his father forces him to stay home for "family game night", which includes Frank's new girlfriend. It goes terribly, ending with two bumbling cops called to the home, and Frank's "My house, my rules" ultimatum. Joe decides to take him up on the threat. Walking home from the party after it was busted up by police, Joe and the erratic Biaggio end up in a secluded area of the woods. It's there that Joe decides to stop living under his father's thumb, recruiting his two friends to build a house and live out in the wild like men.
Montages are often used as simple, cheap short-cuts to progress a story, but they are wielded quite effectively as the boys begin to realize their newfound freedom. We see them stealing materials to construct their makeshift home, while at the same time taking glory in their natural surroundings. Gorgeous, sun-kissed images of cliff-diving exploits and general boys-will-be-boys antics add a poetic texture to Vogt-Robert's fully-observed world. For a while, everything seems to be perfect. The story is really about that moment in a boy's life when it becomes necessary to take that next step into manhood, and watching these three terrific characters make that jump is fascinating. We see them hunting (and often failing) to hunt for their food, building fires, and learning to rely on one another to survive. If their natural families aren't cutting it, these three have found a way to create their own little family unit. Of course, it doesn't stay quite so sunny for long, and when Kelly shows up to add a woman's touch, it causes a splintering of the close-knit group that is painful to watch.
As much as this is a story about the boys finding their independence, we are never left to forget the plight of the parents, and it's here that Offerman and Mullally really get their chance to shine. Both are fantastic at eliciting laughs, and Offerman in particular has never been better, but they prove equally adept at portraying more subtle emotions. Frank is definitely a hardass, capable of tearing into a Chinese food delivery guy over wontons, but we also see him wrestling with the impact of his parenting approach. Robinson and Basso give wonderful, mature performances that carry the film, but it's Arias who really steals the show. As Biaggio, it's hard to figure out what he's going to do next, but we know it'll be something totally weird and idiosyncratic. He gets the bulk of the greatest sight gags, turning up bug-eyed in the most unlikely of places, babbling a stream of non-sequiturs. Arias has given similarly quirky performances before, most recently in the video game comedy Noobz, but here he makes an impact on the par of Christopher Mintz-Plasse in Superbad.
While The Kings of Summer stands up favorably to all of the films it has been mentioned alongside, it more than stands apart as a completely original coming-of-age experience.
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