Kids will be kids — until they run away into the woods.
The Not-So-Wild Ones The Kings of Summer takes awkward kids into the woods BY CURTIS WOLOSCHUK
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hether it’s The Way, Way Back or The To Do son) is confident enough to talk to his crush Kelly (Erin List, this year’s “summer movies” have been Moriarty) in the halls of their high school, he’s resigned steeped in nostalgia. The Kings of Summer, to losing her to college guys with their own apartments. Jordan Vogt-Roberts’ first feature continues this trend, Meanwhile, his best friend Patrick’s (Gabriel Basso) natuinviting viewers to recall their own teenage forays into rally athletic frame masks a fierce introversion that leaves the woods when they inevitably laid eyes on a stretch of him most comfortable when holed up in his basement. untamed land and claimed it as their own. Given their lack of ambition, Chris Galletta’s script Of course, those filmgoers unable to draw on firstrequires a catalyst to flush these underachievers out of hand experience may instead turn to hiding and spur them into action. SomeTHE KINGS OF SUMMER what unexpectedly, the strongest aspect memories of Terence Malick’s 1973 debut Rated R Badlands or last year’s Wes Anderson of a script focused on teenage boys seekoffering Moonrise Kingdom. Like both those Directed by Jordan Vogt-Roberts ing their independence proves to be its films, The Kings of Summer features teenage Starring Nick Robinson, Gabriel Basso, alternately astute and absurd depictions Nick Offerman runaways making a life for themselves of parental posturing and blather. At Magic Lantern in nature. However, the rebels here lack As Joe’s curmudgeonly dad, Parks the bad reputations of Badlands’ Kit or and Recreation’s Nick Offerman effortKingdom’s Sam. Rather, they’re the sort of unmotivated, lessly finds the ideal gritted-teeth delivery for a man who anonymous kids who drift through life without anyone defines himself by rules and routine. In scenes in which giving them a second thought. While Joe (Nick Robinhe refuses to rise to the bait of his son’s taunts, he hilari-
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ously conveys a boiling cauldron of barely suppressed fury and deep-seated frustration. Conversely, Megan Mullally and Marc Evan Jackson play Patrick’s parents as the sort of blissful squares who attempt to earn points by talking about Hancock but end up referring to Will Smith as “that New Prince.” Alas, Vogt-Roberts’ coming-of-age film also harbors serious dramatic ambitions, as evidenced by its use of a slight variation of the time-honored “Chekhov’s gun” principle. Here, the philosophy runs: if a snakeskin is glimpsed in the first act, heavy-handed Garden of Eden allusions must flourish in the second and a serpent must rear its sinister head by the climax. The stage upon which all of this might unfold is a haphazard homestead that the boys construct in an Ohio forest. While it defies credibility that such unskilled hands might erect a two-story structure, their refuge pales in terms of contrivance to Biaggio (Moises Arias), a machete-brandishing weirdo who gloms onto Joe and Patrick. Despite tracks by The Orb and MGMT throbbing on the soundtrack, Vogt-Roberts aspires to a sense of timelessness. In keeping with the film’s “some things never change” mentality, it’s the arrival of a young woman — the aforementioned Kelly — that sets into motion the boys’ expulsion from paradise. Needless to say, one doesn’t necessarily turn to the Good Book when looking to get their teenage kicks. And as the denouement proudly summates what its characters have learned, we can only lament that we never once saw these boys go wild.