Director: Jordan Vogt-Roberts
Year Released: 2013
Rating: 2.0
Two buddies (Nick Robinson and Gabriel Basso), along with a quirky tagalong (Moises Arias), run away from their "horrible home lives" (privileged white kid problems) and build a house in the middle of the forest - things are fine until Vogt-Roberts and screenwriter Chris Galletta throw in a flaky white girl (Erin Moriarty) to disrupt their faux-Thoreauvian "self-sufficiency." The emphasis on quirkiness trumps a need to explore plausible human psychology, as the characters behave eccentrically - Robinson's father (Nick Offerman), for example, handles his son's calling the police (over a game of Monopoly) and running away from home rather casually (had I done that as a youth I wouldn't be here to type this rinky-dink capsule review out). The rather rote love triangle is only in there to bring about the conclusion of the movie (Moriarty embodies the prototypically promiscuous teenage ditz) and there isn't enough in this for anyone have strong feelings about the story one way or another. It just sits there, coasting on cuteness ... like a dumb puppy.
