ViewGuide

Created Jun 22, 2013 10:24PM PST • Edited Jun 24, 2015 05:37PM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Great 4.0

   The Kings of Summer starts with a title so perfect it’s a wonder it’s never been used before. It proceeds to gently satire and lovingly fantasize about coming-of-age in small town America, just pre-facebook.

   The movie gets regularly punctuated by genuinely funny lines, some LOL. Good thing given how arch, absurd and idiosyncratic much of it is. How arch? Satirically arch. Circumstantially surreal to get clinical.

   Vowing “WHY LIVE WHEN YOU CAN RULE” begets a Huck Finn adventure in 21st century America that dramatizes the eternal dynamic of boys wanting to be men. It even includes intense male drumming. Fulfilling that fantasy is a classic movie motive. See White Mane for a pint-sized example.

   Chris Galletta and Jordan Vogt-Roberts write and direct the emotional affect of late adolescence just right, mostly for the boys but also for the girls. It feels to the teens like early adulthood, in the flush of hot bodies and raging hormones, caught between their desires and parentally imposed limits.

   A hot girl gets herself attached to an a-hole older guy, while her besotted classmate bravely tries to hang on, ready to be available when she sees the light. Heartbreak often follows, a reality the movie doesn’t elide.

   Great story aside, the Kings of Summer introduces some major new talent, and not even the pretty girls. Nick Robinson could go from major talent to major star. Tripod is dead right to highlight this kid.

   The movie also includes some major known talent in Megan Mullally and her husband Nick Offerman. Primo TV comedic actors, their talents get put to great use in this feature film.

   The Kings of Summer ain’t no blockbuster, summer or otherwise. But it sure as hell is a great little movie that coming-of-age fans will dig and cinephiles will phile, er, love.

   Finally, let me draw this real life analogy about the movie’s love triangle:

   Wick is Joe, Tripod is Patrick. Kelly could have been any number of girls, not all of them blonde.

4. Acting

   Great 4.0

   Nick Robinson starts the movie looking like a little boy and ends it looking like a handsome young man – coming-of-age incarnate.

   Tripod is right. Nick Robinson is a name we’re likely to see atop lots of movie posters going forward. A star is born.

   Gabriel Basso is likable as his more buff buddy, a wrestler with hives.

   Together they’re a pair of dudes me and Tripod can relate to.

   Erin Moriarty is really cute as the girl who leads-on the first one before doing it with the second one. That’s something most of us have seen more than once in our own lives.

   Moises Arias plays the sexually confused, highly amped third wheel in their return to nature. He’s a demented kid, but harmless.

   Nick Offerman has the perfect last name for what he does on screen. He’s a deadpan dick, always looking to Off pretty much anyone talking to him. Off-er-Man kinda describes his schtick.

   Alison Brie is crisply cute as Nick Robinson’s older sister, who has escaped Nick Offerman’s house in the car he bought for her to drive to college. No, she won’t take her younger brother along. He asks.

   Megan Mullally employs her singular comedic instrument, a voice that sounds like a horn. As Gabriel Basso’s Mother, no wonder he has hives. Marc Evan Jackson is suitably emasculated as her husband, the wrestler’s ineffectual Dad.

   Mary Lynn Rajskub turns in a decent performance in the underwritten role of the local Police Captain. Chloe deserves more roles.

5. Male Stars Really Great 4.5

6. Female Stars Great 4.0

7. Female Costars Really Great 4.5

8. Male Costars Great 4.0

10. Film

    Great 4.0

    Every adult is shown to have a dark side and an obtusely banal side. The teens also have dark sides, especially when things become coed. They’re desperately running from their obtusely banal sides.

    Get it?

    Think mature adolescent male fantasy, American small town variety.

11. Direction Great 4.0

12. Play Great 4.0

    The Dad is an acerbic asshole: smart enough and strong enough to get his way.

13. Music Very Good 3.5

14. Visuals Great 4.0
15. Content

16. Edge

    Risqué 2.2

17. Sex Titillating 2.5

18. Violence Gentle 1.5

19. Rudeness Profane 2.6

21. Reality

    Glib 1.9

    Only one Reality score is really important for this movie – Circumstantial Reality.

    CircoReality says two knuckleheads and a teenage dwarf couldn’t collect enough material to build a clubhouse in less than a month, not when they’ve gotta steal everything that costs more than the couple hundred bucks they stole from home. Not a house with a loft, den and master bedroom. Nice touch, the Master Bedroom.

    BioReality presupposes that they wouldn’t get injured, not even a stubbed toe.

22. Circumstantial Surreal 3.0

23. Biological Glib 1.8

24. Physical Natural 1.0