Four stars. Rating: R, and rather harshly, for occasional profanity and teen drinking
By Derrick Bang
This is why I love my job.
The Kings of Summer marks an impressive feature
debut for director Joran Vogt-Roberts and writer Chris Galletta, the latter
with nothing more to his credit than a brief 2005 stint as a production staff
member for The Late Show with David
Letterman. Vogt-Roberts’ résumé includes several shorts and a lot of TV
series work, the latter suggesting the hilariously snarky mind set on ample
display in this film.
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| Having more or less completed their new home away from home, our three young renegades — from left, Joe (Nick Robinson), Patrick (Gabriel Basso) and Biaggio (Moises Arias) — contemplate the next challenge: putting food on the table. That'll prove far more difficult than anticipated, since they've no experience with traps, lures, bare-handed fishing or any other woodsian skills. |
Actually, calling this picture “impressive”
isn’t nearly strong enough. It’s a sure-fire audience pleaser: one of those
so-called “little films” — like Little
Miss Sunshine or Juno —
guaranteed to take off like a rocket, once word gets out. This year’s enthusiastic
Sundance Festival audience certainly thought so, granting a nomination for the
Grand Jury Prize (not won, alas).
As a collaborative team,
Vogt-Roberts and Galletta demonstrate a striking degree of creative synch; the
latter’s dialogue sounds just right
coming from the naturalistic ensemble cast, granting a level of verisimilitude
that makes these characters feel like the folks next door.
Allowing, that is, for a
left-of-center gaggle of eccentrics commonly found in films by Wes Anderson or
the Coen Brothers. But I mean that in the gentlest way: However funny the
lines, however warped some of the emotional behavior by sidebar adults, this is
— first and foremost — an intimate coming-of-age saga.
In the truest sense of the old
cliché, we laugh with our young
protagonists, not at them.
The contemporary setting is a
smallish town in Northeast Ohio, the sort of all-American community that
typifies such narratives. Best friends Joe (Nick Robinson) and Patrick (Gabriel
Basso) are strongly bonded, in part, by their inability to cope with utterly
impossible parents.
Joe’s father, Frank (Nick
Offerman), hasn’t yet recovered from his wife’s untimely death, years earlier.
He has become bitter, condescending and imperious: a combination that doesn’t
blend well with a teenage son’s instinctive rebelliousness. Joe’s favorite
method of revenge, when sufficiently annoyed, is to summon the local law —
personified by the competent Capt. Davis (Mary Lynn Rajskub) and her absolutely
useless rookie companion (Thomas Middleditch) — on some trumped-up accusation.
Frank responds to such hijinks
the way he deals with everybody: angry sarcasm delivered by Offerman with a
relentlessly straight face ... which, of course, makes every bile-fueled line
that much funnier. (And they’re pretty funny to begin with.)
Joe’s older sister, Heather
(Alison Brie), fled the tension-laced home awhile back, although she still
visits. That speaks well of the young woman; her choice of male companions,
however, does not. Colin (Eugene Cordero) is a misfit who’s as oblivious to
social cues, as he is to the fact that Frank constantly winds him up.
In this case, we can hardly blame
Frank; Colin’s much too easy a
target. Which Heather is aware of, and Brie’s face is an amusing study in
conflict: clearly annoyed by her loutish father, but equally embarrassed by her
clueless boyfriend.
