The Kings of Summer/Toy's House (2013) - Vogt-Roberts' charming but empty coming-of-age venture

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The three handsome young stars of Jordan Vogt-Roberts' The Kings of Summer hang midair on its poster

QUICK REVIEW:

Three friends, who are tired of their smothering parents, go off in their high school summer break and build a tree house in the forest, - but will they be able to survive there, and what about girls?

Kings is a promising film that very fast turns out to have no serious core whatsoever; - everything in it is a joke, and, what is worse, often not a very good one. Debuting writer Chris Galletta (The Final Girls (2015), special thanks) is responsible for the shallow script.
Theatrical feature debuting director Jordan Vogt-Roberts (Single Dads (2009-11)) seems to have been most concerned with getting the 'right' visual gimmicks into the film, like flares, slow motion shots and CGI. - And cutting to these in the middle of nearly every scene in the film, so that these consequently don't attain their own life or importance. - A shame, because there's nothing wrong with the premise.
The young actors Nick Robinson (Jurassic World (2015)), Gabriel Basso (Super 8 (2011)) and Moises Arias (The Stanford Prison Experiment (2015)) are charming, and Nick Offerman (Me and Greg and the Dying Girl (2015)) and Megan Mullally (Parks and Recreation (2009-15)) score some laughs, but Kings of Summer is an empty movie, unfortunately.

Watch the trailer for the movie here

Cost: Unknown
Box office: In excess of 1.5 mil. $
= Uncertainty
[Kings, an independent production, was shot in the summer of 2012 in Ohio, and it premiered at Sundance, whereupon CBS Films attained the distribution right. It grossed only 1.3 mil. $ in North America, where it never crossed 100 screens, and, even worse, just under 0.2 mil. $ abroad, with Poland as the biggest market with 93k $. (At least according the information I have been able to find.) The bottom line is that the film was most likely a huge flop. Vogt-Roberts has, amazingly, been hired subsequently for the enormous Kong: Skull Island (2017), and rumored also to head the Metal Gear Solid movie. The Kings of Summer is certified fresh at 75 % with a 6.9 critical average on Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of The Kings of Summer?