RileyOnFilm This is a fun little movie that made it under my radar a few years ago. If you enjoy high school dramadies, your likely to enjoy this. In one Summer, 3 boys discover a Lord of the Flies land in the wilderness by their home. Their escape their focus and isn't that what adolescent movies are all about? It's a common theme but the characterization and sometimes tense dramatic portions are original and effective.This high school aged comedy/drama starts where the high school campus ends. Here we have three teenaged friends, unhappy with their home lives, who join together to leave the suburbs and build their own shack in the woods.I think the angst of high school kids is pretty standard here. I remember wanting to move out of my parents house so badly at that age. I wasn't financially prepared to so I had to wait. These boys don't. They go through all the steps of building and preparing and their adventures along the way are quite engaging and heartwarming.They do some drinking and smoking and of course they try all the things they couldn't do back home. There are some interesting characters here as well. The main character's father is quite interesting. He gets angry and has an opportunity to reconnect. Does he take that opportunity? You'll have to see to find out. While comic in nature there are some serious scenes as well.There is a girl as there always will be. Her role is similar to the "interloper" in he Little Rascals fort. The drama and tension there becomes evident as the boys find out whether she belongs or not. I found the father drama along with the girl conflict quite easy to recall from childhood. I remembered these things that you go out and build a fort to discover. It's a good watch and I'd recommend it to anyone but mostly to fans of the high school dramedy.

RLTerry1 Return to that impressionable time in your life. However, unlike the more conventional coming of age stories, the subtext and themes of then first-time feature director Jordan Vogt-Roberts' film, written by Chris Valletta, are merely touched upon but seldom followed through in any meaningful way. The deadpan comedy and one-liners are simply tossed around instead of providing deeper meaning or introspect that may have increased the emotions felt throughout the movie. It's a very surface level movie that fails to substantially deliver the dynamic quality narrative that is typically expected of these films. That isn't to say that it is without merit; quite the contrary, it is enjoyable and is successful in taking you back to that time when you felt that no one understood you and you wanted to be treated like an adult, but still clung to the reckless freedom of hormonal youth. Understanding the consequences of one's behavior is a regularly visited theme in the movie. With gorgeous outdoor cinematography and relatable characters, The Kings of Summer contains a little something for everyone who has ever thought of running away and building a cabin in the woods for you and your buds.The Kings of Summer is about three teenagers Joe (Nick Robinson), Patrick (Gabriel Basso), and Biaggio (Moises Arias) who run away from their respective dysfunctional families and make a life for themselves out in the woods by building a house and living off the land. However, even this three-fold cord has struggles and disagreements, jealously and rage. The young men are forced to work through life's problems while dealing with the chemical and psychological changes of growing up.Have you ever just wanted to escape life? Just quit and run away to a tropical island or mountain valley? That is just what you will encounter in The Kings of Summer. Coming-of-age stories are usually some of the films that find their way onto favorite lists or those to which so many people can relate because they deal with issues many of us face while in that transitional time from teenager to adult. From lakeside high school parties to hormones and independence, this film includes some of the various turning points and learning opportunities one likely encounters while discovering who he or she are. Ordinarily, films such as this, deliver the content in such a way that it offers deeper meaning or emotional connections in the narrative. And although there are some themes and moderate introspect, the film does not go far enough in connecting the audience with the teenagers or adults in the movie. There were several lines of dialog that alluded to potential conflicts and personal struggles that could have been revisited to offer more substance in the film. That being said, the writer and director do provide relatable characters who are each very different from the other in an effort to provide audiences with a character to whom they can identify. It is important for coming-of-age movies to not only contain relatable characters but relatable situations as well. And this movie does that, just not to the extent it had the capacity to do.One of the interesting themes that can be read in The Kings of Summer is questioning one's sexual orientation. Much like in Wes Craven's A Nightmare on Elm Street 2, in which the protagonist's sexual orientation is questionable, you can find similar themes in this film. Throughout the movie, Joe is regularly making speeches on and offering up pithy comments about masculinity. Quite regularly, Joe lectures Patrick and Biaggio about what it means to me a man. At times, Joe even becomes defensive when his masculine ways are questioned. As Shakespeare penned, "…thou doth protest too loudly…" It is entirely possible that Joe is struggling to come to terms with his sexual preferences. This could explain why he would go to such drastic measures to escape his rigid father in order to discover who he is when he has to provide for himself. Other supporting evidence of this theme is simply the fact that he doesn't get the girl even though he tried much more than Patrick. When Patrick winds up with the girl, Joe is outraged and never quite gets over it. There are also the frequent trips to Boston Market instead of truly "being a man" and hunting for food. Maybe he's simply trying too hard to deny who he is developing to be? Perhaps. But, there are additionally also other themes that can be read in this unique coming-of-age story.Although this film did not receive the national attention in 2013 that it really should have, it is definitely one that is worth a watch if you enjoy this sub-genre of Drama. Ordinarily, ensemble casts can hinder effective character development and excellent storytelling, the cast in this film is handled moderately well. If there had been more focus on the personal struggles or if the film included an external goal, then it would have definitely been better and perhaps more popular. Stories in general–especially visual stories–require the principle characters to not only have internal goals, but a clearly defined external goal as well. Often the external goal can echo the internal one, but it is important to show a tangible goal. Unfortunately, the latter is lacking in the diegesis of The Kings of Summer. This movie won't likely ever have the nostalgia or cache of Stand By Me, but it does offer up a fun story with an excellent cast and some personal growth that will keep you entertained for the hour and a half runtime.

blakkdog Enjoyed it for what it was which was a standard coming of age film wrapped in a quirky vehicle for comedic ad libbing by the likes of Nick Offerman, Megan Mullally, Eugene Cordero, etc. who do a fantastic and hysterical job (although I did find Offerman's character to be a little too much of an angry ass to allow myself to completely appreciate the clear humorous one liners in his seething bitter attitude toward everything). But the movie is a strange mix. Its both a platform for this kind of free form comedic prowess by some talented comedians and a standard coming of age drama (yes very much a drama in a teen sense) for the main teenage characters who kind of exist in their own little teen soap opera bubble within the body of the film. So you are forced to follow along with the main story of the teens finding themselves, working out their relationships with each other and figuring out whats important in life in very tender and often dramatic ways while this kind of alternative parallel universe whirls around them that's very often funny and almost always distracting and hard to weave in with the main story. It was just a weird mix for me. I guess the film makers were trying to present their worlds in a way that allows us to see how they see it and so they present their parents and the police and society at large as farcical, ludicrous, and almost surreal so we can relate to their plight more. Maybe? So you end up with a world where you have no 'straight man' adults but rather a bunch of bizarre and/or clownish characters that are thoroughly entertaining (the cops are great and the scene where Mullally is going off on them about the Irish being the 'blacks of Europe' was hysterical). There's something to that approach that I appreciate but I found that I wasn't able to stir the weird oil/water mixture of comedic muscle-flexing by some very talented comedians with a teen soap opera by teen actors who don't/cant follow that pattern at all. Oh but with one exception… Dear wonderful Biaggio…Biaggio is my favorite character in this movie and the best character I've seen in a movie in I don't know how many years and thank god for him. I would have appreciated this movie much less without his completely alien bizarre wackiness to balance the other kids (especially Joe) and keep it from becoming some kind of terrible "90210 in the woods" teen garbage puke with no soul and no magic. At first he just seems like a silly annoying throw away weirdo character not worth investing in (which is exactly what the main characters think of him) but as he develops and becomes one of the main characters you embrace him completely just as they do until you are hanging on his every word and action waiting for him to floor you with some other truly wonderful quirky comment or weird look. I couldn't get enough of Biaggio. I would pay money to see a movie where Biaggio is the main character despite the fact that I would know going in that movie would surely suck because he cant be the focus of a story without completely altering his role. But I would go anyway…However, I digress… I enjoyed the movie but in the end I found it lacking a real message. Is it about the parents (and therefore the world) coming around to understand how their kids think so they can relate to them better and not be lunatics like they were before and not try to control them so much? Because losing them made them realize how much they need them around and that their kids are capable of living independently and surviving? Im not sure that works. Is it that teen relationship drama isn't that important in the end and buds are buds? I didn't think they presented the resolution between Joe and Patrick well. And to try to have Kelly be the mediator when she was the cause of the whole thing didn't work for me. That scene where they flip each other off from their cars then both smile is that supposed to smooth everything and make everything better? Is that supposed to be a resolution or are they just saying The resolution is No resolution? Maybe that's a little too indie for me… I feel like Patrick was an ass and that Joe was enormously over reactive and angry in his response (like his father?) and I found myself losing some respect for both characters because of the way that conflict unfolded. But I have a feeling someone will say Im not getting it and Im probably not.A few plot inconsistencies bothered me too. Patrick goes home and they don't grill him about where Joe is? What?? Also, for the love of god if you are going to have a scene where someone gets dramatically bitten by a "poisonous" snake make sure that snake at least looks like a copper head or a rattle snake or something and not CLEARLY AND OBVIOUSLY like a gopher or a garter snake! Oh my god that was terrible… What is this a middle school play where someone shakes a rope and we just assume it's a snake?But overall worth watching despite being somewhat uncategorizable (which is certainly no crime if you can pull it off). Its heart is a drama but its body is a comedy. Yet its not a dramedy. In essence this is a teen drama with a comedy oozing all over it (flowing around it?). Not sure if that works necessarily but it was a fun attempt to watch.

BittanyG The film is dreamy, nicely shot and with good young actors. I'm sure we'll see more of the three boys in the future. But this is a film by boys, about boyscout fantasies, for boys. A princess thrown in there for them to fantasize about but obviously with no content other than being just the pretty object of the boyscouts' dreams. So tired of this. But this is what gets funding from men as usual. All the f-ing time. The Hucklberry Finn dream the funders, director, producer etcetera have about what they wish they would have dared to do when they were young. I guess it's pretty good but myself I'm soooo longing for the film, just one please, by and about young women coming of age and not please just centred about dreaming about boys. Im sure the script is out there, unfunded by the men sitting on the money. So no this is not a teen movie or a coming of age movie. It's a boys movie. And yes pretty good but had enough of them. Btw the Belagio(?) boy too weird and didn't really fit in to the rest of the story, could've been tuned down a bit. Good acting though. Liked the father role and the one playing him.