Kings of Summer: Three Boys Alone

Most boys-alone movies isolate the kids through a tragic accident -- a plane crash in Lord of the Flies, a terrorist attack in Toy Soldiers.  But in The Kings of Summer (2013) aka Toy's House, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and is now in limited release, the boys head out into the wilderness by design.

Tiring of the oppression of adult society, nerdish teen Joe Toy (Nick Robinson) and his muscular best friend Patrick (Gabriel Basso, below) build a house in the woods near their home and vanish, hoping for one last summer of freedom before high school.  Tagging along is Biaggio (Moises Arias, right), an eccentric outsider who claims to have no gender.

These are affluent kids, so they outfit their retreat with furniture, a boombox, and video games, and sneak into town for groceries, but they still bring a sense of wildness to their adventure, and homoromantic freedom with many scenes of the three swimming, dancing, slicing watermelons with swords, and hitting each other in the shoulder to demonstrate their affection.  Soon they have formed an alternative family.

Unfortunately, there is some homophobia that cast a shadow on the gay subtext. Biaggio worries that he's gay because he coughs a lot and gets sinusitis. Turns out he actually has the debilitating disease cystic fibrosis.  That's not nearly as bad!

Also some racism, sexism, and a lot of profanity, including the f-bomb every five seconds.

And the summer ends with the boys acquiescing to their heterosexual destiny: a girl shows up, and both Joe and Patrick like her.

But for awhile, they had each other, and a summer that could have lasted forever.

Seattle native Nick Robinson is currently starring in Melissa and Joey (2010-) with Melissa Joan Hart (formerly Sabrina the Teenage Witch) and Joey Lawrence.

Gabriel Basso (left) has starred in Alabama Moon with Uriah Shelton and Super 8 with Joel Courtney, and on the tv series The Big C (2010-2013), as the son of a woman with cancer.  He also appears in the music video Kyle and Donny: The Anatomy of Tide, which is mostly devoted to close-up shot of the two semi-nude musclemen.

Super 8: Four Boys, a Girl, and a Monster

An homage to filmmaking, Steven Spielberg, and J.J. Abrams' childhood, Super 8 (2011) is set in the distant past year of 1979, where high schooler Joe Lamb (Joel Courtney) is working on a zombie movie, along with his best friend Preston (Zach Mills), the pyromaniac Cary (Ryan Lee), and the skittish Martin (Gabriel Basso). They need a female lead, so Preston calls a girl he likes, Alice (Elle Fanning).  Unfortunately, Joe likes her too.

While they are filming at the train station, they witness a train crash, which releases thousands of small white cubes.  To their horror, they discover that their science teacher, the cliched intuitive black guy (Glynn Turman) crashed into the train deliberately to stop it.  "They'll kill you!" he exclaims, mysteriously.

Meanwhile, Joe's dad, Deputy Sheriff Jackson Lamb (Kyle Chandler) is despondent after the death of his wife in an unrelated factory accident.  He blames the town nogoodnick, Louis Dainard (Ron Eldard), who was supposed to take her shift that day.

By the way, Louis just happens to be Alice's father.  Her mother "ran off."

The Peyton Place-like soap opera unfolds as unexplained events bedevil the small Ohio town.  All of the dogs run away.  People disappear.  The army arrives and takes over.  The weird cubes start pulsating and changing size.  There's a monster.

And a lot of gay subtexts.

1. Joe is a quiet outsider boy who does all of the makeup for the actors.  He has numerous gay-coded interests: makeup, art, design.  And his father assumes that he is gay.  Most parents, upon discovering that their teenage son is hanging out with a girl, would assume hetero-romance, but Deputy Lamb doesn't, not for a moment.  He consistently refers to the relationship as "a friendship," and to Alice as "one of your friends."

2. Though Joe and Preston both like The Girl, they get a scene in which they discuss their feelings for each other.

3. Martin (left) and Cary express no heterosexual interest; they don't even gawk at The Girl or make sleazy comments about her breasts, like nearly every other movie teenager.

4. Louis and Deputy Lamb apparently were close friends in high school, mirroring the relationship between Joe and Preston.  Then they had an unexplained falling-out.

Why does Deputy Lamb blame Joe for his wife's death?  Maybe Louis was interested in the Deputy, and unconsciously wanted her "out of the way" so he could move in?  Maybe Louis married in the first place only because the object of his affection was marrying.

Now, as they work together to save their kids, there is a palpable erotic tension between them.  One expects them to kiss at any moment.

They don't, of course.  The resolution, which draws on E.T. and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, involves a heterosexist rescue of The Girl.  But it's a nice ride.



In 2013, Joel Courtney will be playing Tom Sawyer to Jake T. Austin's Huck Finn.