The name of writer/director/soundtrack compiler Wes Anderson will get bandied around so much near the upcoming independent film "The Kings of Summer" that you will think he had any hand in it. Many of Anderson's tropes are there. There is the soundtrack which seems to reflect the character's every emotion all while completely catching you off-guard. One moment they are playing Thin Lizzy and the next they are playing something that sounds like it is off the "Spring Breakers" soundtrack. You've got quirky characters saying snappy dialogue with a speed and voraciously that almost pulls out of the element. You even have a character played by Moises Arias who looks oddly like Jason Schwartzman. Still, Anderson has absolutely nothing to do with the film. It is a coming-of-age wilderness story (barring a slight similarity to the plot of Anderson's "Moonrise Kingdom" from last year) directed by first-timer Jordan Vogt-Roberts and written by first-time writer Chris Galletta. Even with the similarities to Anderson's style, "The Kings of Summer" is a pleasant, funny movie that shows that Vogt-Roberts and Galletta might be filmmakers to look out for in a few years when they've learned to fine-tune their craft.
Joe (Nick Robinson) and Patrick (Gabriel Basso) are completely sick of their parents. Joe's cold and calculating father Frank (Nick Offerman) is so controlling that he even times the exact amount of minutes that Joe has been using the shower. Patrick's parents (Megan Mullally and Marc Evan Jackson) are so plain vanilla that they find buying a different variation of ciabatta bread is an adventure. With school ending and summer beginning, Joe and Patrick don't know how they are going to survive the time they must spend with their strict and boring families. While in the woods, they come across an open area. Employing Joe's rudimentary skills at building learned from wood shop class coupled with his extreme distaste for being stuck with his father, he and Patrick along with their eccentric new friend Biaggio (Moises Arias) set out to build a house in the middle of the woods. Not a tree house or a clubhouse but a cabin of manliness and solitude. Here they will learn quite a bit more than carpentry.
Writer Chris Galletta has taken a fairly standard coming-of-age story (teenagers rebel against family by going into nature) and turned it into a genuinely funny comedy/drama. The strength (and also sometimes weakness) of Galletta's script is that it is openly quirky. This isn't quirky in the "Napoleon Dynamite" sense. Instead, it has most of the characters delivering smart and witty lines that will no doubt have audiences laughing. Many of those lines are delivered by Arias as Biaggio, one of the oddest characters we have seen in some time. Biaggio almost always has some oddly cryptic line of dialogue to completely confound Joe and Patrick. Again though, this comedy and wit is a bit of a downfall for "The Kings of Summer". A little bit of Biaggio goes a long way. You will find yourself laughing at many of his off-kilter lines at the beginning but by the end, you will be rolling your eyes. There is a reason a character like McLovin (who Arias will no doubt be compared to) was a supporting character and not a main character. You end up wondering why you laughed at Biaggio when he is delivering his 40th cryptic line.
There are also moments in "The Kings of Summer" that try too hard for the comedy in the situation and end up limiting the dramatic impact of other scenes. Scenes where Joe has melodramatic daydreams are especially impressive and recall John Cusack daydreams from "Better Off Dead". Sometimes though, they are trying too hard to pull laughs from something that isn't there. As talented and hilarious as Offerman often can be, he is simply too cold in this roll. While his cold demeanor is all but a trademark thanks to his wonderful performance in TV's "Parks and Recreation", here he almost goes too far. When he finally does warm up, we don't know if we truly care that he has. Other times, the film pushes for dramatic scenes too close to comedic ones. They almost pay off, making us feel deeply for the characters, until Biaggio pipes in with another catch phrase. While I wouldn't say "The Kings of Summer" has an identity crises, it may have succeeded more by dialing down on the comedy and focusing more on the relationships between characters.
"The Kings of Summer" is a charming film that is worth catching on a hot day when you have become sick of seeing the countless big-budget blockbuster sequels. Like last year's "Safety Not Guaranteed", it fills a void in the multiplex. It is genuinely entertaining and holds a few surprises. Just don't think too hard about it. I firmly believe we will be seeing more work by Vogt-Roberts and Galetta in the future. This is their "Bottle Rocket". We will just have to see if they have a "Royal Tenenbaums" in them somewhere down the line.
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