Joe Toy (Nick Robinson), on the cusp of adulthood, finds his frustration with his single father Frank's (Nick Offerman) efforts to organise his life boiling over. After a family game night that culminates in Joe prank-calling the cops about Frank, he runs away to a secluded area in the local woods which he found earlier with his best friend Patrick (Gabriel Basso) and an eccentric tagalong named Biaggio (Moises Arias). With them back in tow, Joe declares they will build a house there and live off the land, devoid of parents and responsibility. Upon completing their makeshift lodgings, the three boys find themselves living as masters of their own destinies without interruption. But they soon discover you can run but you can't hide from civilization and (genuine or created) family, or the conflicts of either.
Leave it to indie filmmakers to produce a legitimately refreshing and oddball coming-of-age dramedy like The Kings of Summer. Director Jordan Vogt-Roberts, who's since made the decent Kong: Skull Island, working from Chris Galletta's methodical screenplay (which thankfully has teenage-sounding dialogue), infuses this one with thorough understanding and affection for every character and the message, while invoking a visual language that fleshes the many moods of the wilderness out so authentically. Praise also here goes naturally (pun intended) to cinematographer Ross Riege, and Ryan Miller offers a score that matches this convincingly through a teenage male mindset.
But especially as they are teenagers, most of us probably wouldn't care quite as much for such characters were they not relatable (warts and all), and Robinson, Basso and comic relief Arias all bring them to life with nicely layered performances, and evident chemistry and comic timing.
The Kings of Summer is a brilliantly entertaining, wise and resonant bildungsroman.
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