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| From: http://www.thefastpictureshow.com/2013/10/the-kings-of-summer-jordan-vogt-roberts.html |
Logline: THE KINGS OF SUMMER is a unique coming-of-age comedy about three teenage friends – Joe (Nick Robinson), Patrick (Gabriel Basso) and the eccentric and unpredictable Biaggio (Moises Arias) - who, in the ultimate act of independence, decide to spend their summer building a house in the woods and living off the land.
- from the official The Kings of Summer Preliminary Productions notes
"We are our own men" is the main motivation of our protagonist Joe as he goes through the transformation from a teenager with a pretentious perception of what it means to be a man/adult to a more perceptive person, knowing that there's so much more to the learn about being a man/adult.
At the start of the film we find out that Joe is living with his widowed father Frank (Nick Offerman). Their relationship is on the rocks, as Frank is unable to truly get over the death of his late wife, emoting his sadness through sarcasm and tough love towards his son.
One instance being a game of monopoly during family game night, in which Frank disregards the rules of the game by just trading properties with another player to spite Joe for an earlier embarrassing anecdote about him. This eye for an eye exchange between father and son continues until Joe has finally had enough, deciding to leave his father for an independent life with two other friends.
Patrick, Joe's best friend is much more calm, seemingly more confident with himself. However, he does have his own problems with his parents, his overly intrusive parents causes him to have hives and be eternally embarrassed at everything they have to say. Being less of an actual problem in comparison to Joe's more toxic relationship.
Biaggio is basically a comic relief character with one-liners and eccentric behaviours. He is one of the underdeveloped characters who is basically there for the sake of lightening the mood, albeit some contributions felt forced.
The trio goes on an adventure to build a pretty impressive looking house in the woods. While Joe and Biaggio go on a failed attempt to hunt for animals, Patrick finds a snake's skin. Patrick's warnings against littering in the woods is dismissed over a dinner of chickens they "found" in the woods. Joe immediately breaks the rules by inviting his crush Kelly (Erin Moriarty) to the house.
She comes over for dinner and brings along a few friends. Kelly compliments Joe about being very talented for coming up with this whole idea in the first place. This gives Joe hope, he is almost a fully fledged man living independently and now by getting the girl his transformation should be complete. Over the campfire, Patrick and Kelly bonds in the background as Joe and Biaggio talk. I understand that the writers are probably trying to show us the perspective of Joe as Kelly ends up with his best friend Patrick by placing their interaction in the background. But by leaving the interaction unheard, they are under-developing yet another character, Kelly. It seems like she is just there to be a love interest to be fought over, between the Joe and Patrick, resulting in having no real depth or personality of her own.
During a very similar monopoly game, Joe teams up with Biaggio to spite Patrick mirroring the behaviours of his father. This ends in a solidly acted confrontation scene between Joe and Patrick. Joe blaming Kelly for the reason for the whole group falling apart calling her a "bitch" and a "cancer". Ultimately resulting in everyone leaving Joe alone to fend for himself.
The scene before this confrontation was my favourite in this movie. Frank asks Joe's sister, Heather (Alison Brie), if he's a bastard. She replies with "No dad, a bastard would make everyone around him miserable just because he is." Which flows very nicely to the way Joe acts out.
The film ends with Joe taking responsibility by acting fast to save Biaggio's life after he hilariously tries to kill a poisonous snake, in the presence of Kelly and Frank. Joe has taken his first step to being responsible.
This film was really well acted, I believed all of the actors performances. Although I did feel that something was missing in this film, perhaps it was the excessive callbacks to the theme of what is means to truly become a man from the eyes of Joe.
MY RATING: 2/4
Note: I edited video shortening The Kings of Summer into less than 10 minutes. Although I hope to make something better in the future, along the lines of a story analysis of a movie.
Link to video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ob1DPuucHkk
Cheers
Sman
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