The Way, Way Back

It wasn't up until the point that Sam Rockwell entered The Way, Way Back that I began to realize how special the movie was.  Up until the point, it had been an enjoyable but fairly routine coming of age story.  But when Rockwell's hilarious portrayal of Owen, the manager of an outdated water park called Water Wizz entered the story, the movie seemed to take a life of its own.  What started as a standard movie became a little bit funnier, smarter, and more insightful.

But this is a wonderful little movie for more reasons than just Sam Rockwell.  It just took a little while for those reasons to become apparent to me.  The movie's structure is laid back and kind of awkward, much like its teenage hero, Duncan (Liam James), an introverted 14-year-old who doesn't know how to deal with a lot of things in his life.  It's summer vacation, and like a lot of awkward teens, he's being dragged off on a family trip that he has little interest in participating in.  Worse still, his family now consists of his divorced mother, Pam (Toni Collette), and her new boyfriend, Trent (Steve Carell), who has a teenage daughter from a past marriage.  Trent is the kind of guy who seems to be trying to fit into Duncan and Pam's lives, but isn't doing a very good job of it.  His idea of "bonding" with Duncan is to be brutally honest with the kid, telling him point blank that he doesn't see the boy as having many prospects or hopes for the future.

When they arrive at Trent's beach house for the vacation, it seems the only company Duncan will be enjoying is the frequently tipsy next door neighbor, Betty (Allison Janney).  There is some good news - Betty has an attractive teenage daughter named Susanna (AnnaSophia Robb) who does seem genuinely interested in striking up a relationship of some sort with Duncan.  The only problem is, he doesn't know what to say around her.  Most conversations result in Susanna desperately trying to keep the flow going, while Duncan fumbles for responses.  It seems that Duncan is doomed to a summer of mostly avoiding his family, and awkward encounters with the girl next door.  That's when he discovers the Water Wizz amusement park, and is taken under the wing by the funny and sensitive Owen, who probably recognizes what Duncan is going through in his life, and offers the kid a job so that he'll at least have somewhere to go while he's trying to sort things out in his life.

Much like last year's The Perks of Being a Wallflower, this is a movie that takes a lot of conventional elements that are pretty normal to the teen movie genre, and then infuses it with enough wit and smart writing to make it stand out.  The Way, Way Back isn't quite as good as that film was, but it's still an amazing effort by writers and directors, Nat Faxon and Jim Rash, who previously did the screenplay for the George Clooney film, The Descendants.  Just as in that movie, the two show a very natural talent for dialogue.  They also have a great understanding of character.  Everybody has gone through the same phase that Duncan does in this story, where they feel powerless and helpless to those around them.  Through Owen and some of the other people he encounters during his summer, he learns to be more comfortable with himself, and to not shy away when he feels he is wronged.

What appealed to me about Owen is that he is not exactly the kind of mentor we get in these kind of films.  He seems more interested in hanging out with the kid than in actually teaching him anything, but in a happy accident, the two bond enough that, yes, they do get to share a few honest moments with each other.  What makes Rockwell's performance stand out is how he deftly handles his character's rapid-fire comedic dialogue.  This is easily one of his more charismatic performances, and is likely to be one of the better comic portrayals of the year.  In a movie like this, you would think Steve Carell would be giving him competition, but surprisingly, Carell plays it straight here, and is actually playing an unsympathetic character.  It's not that his Trent is a "villain", he simply is ill-equipped to handle the responsibilities of a family, or even moving on to a new wife, as we begin to question his loyalties to Duncan's mom as the film goes on.

This is actually a film filled with many great performances, and one that I fear will be overlooked will be Toni Collette, who is very sympathetic as the mother, a woman who is trying to start over with her life, doesn't know how to communicate with her son, and doesn't even know if she is making the right choices in either of their lives.  Young Liam James also does a wonderful job of creating a distant yet emotional performance as the isolated Duncan.  As he slowly starts to come out of his shell during the course of the film, the progression seems natural.  There's no one generic or contrived "ah-ha" moment, like a lesser film would provide.  It feels like something he has earned during the course of the movie, and it's lots of little things, not just one moment.

The Way, Way Back is probably going to be one of those little indie movies that ends up getting a big audience.  It certainly deserves that honor.  This is a smart and funny film that's very easy to relate to.  Now that the bigger summer movies are slowly starting to wind down, it's time for the small movies to take center stage, and I can't think of a better one than this right now.

See the movie times in your area or buy the DVD at Amazon.com!

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