Fed up with a father who manages his every move, a teenager decides the only fix is to disappear into the woods and build a life with no adults in it.
What is The Kings of Summer about?
Joe is nearing the end of adolescence and increasingly at odds with his single father Frank's attempts to run his life down to the smallest detail. Rather than wait it out, Joe recruits his best friend Patrick and an odd, mostly silent kid named Biaggio, and the three slip off to a clearing deep in the woods to put up a house of their own. Once the makeshift home is finished, they set themselves up as their own authority, answerable to nobody, and the film follows what happens once the freedom they wanted turns out to come with its own complications.
About the cast
Nick Robinson leads as Joe, with Gabriel Basso as Patrick and Moisés Arias as Biaggio. Nick Offerman and Megan Mullally appear as Joe's parents, and Erin Moriarty and Alison Brie round out the cast, alongside Craig Cackowski.
Context & significance
Jordan Vogt-Roberts made The Kings of Summer as his feature debut in 2013, working from a script built around three teenage leads and a genuinely wooded, off-grid setting rather than a studio backlot. The film pairs deadpan adult comedy with a fairly earnest coming-of-age story about wanting independence before you're ready for what independence actually demands, and its visual style leans on the outdoors — long grass, tree cover, open sky — to make the boys' hideout feel like its own small country. The film built its audience gradually rather than through a big opening weekend, helped along by word of mouth about its cast of comedic character actors playing it mostly straight. Its mix of a small-scale plot with a distinctive visual sense made it a reference point for later teen-driven indie comedies.
Watching The Kings of Summer on Ktime
The Kings of Summer streams on K-Time with Persian dubbing and Persian subtitles, reachable with a free account login; it sits alongside K-Time's wider comedy and coming-of-age catalogue for Persian-speaking viewers everywhere.