The summer before I came to Dartmouth, I worked as a cashier in a beach town. You know the kind, where urbanites come to be "one with nature," whatever that means. Each morning, when I got off the boat to go to work, it was like I stepped into what I imagine a real-life Margaritaville would look like. Nobody wore shoes (or, on occasion, shirts) or had a care in the world. To an extent, then, the world in which "The Way, Way Back" (2013) takes place felt oddly to familiar to me.
Dragged to Cape Cod by his mother's (Toni Collette) new boyfriend Trent (Steve Carell), shy and reserved teenager Duncan (Liam James) thinks he's going to have the worst summer ever. That all changes when he meets whimsical water park owner Owen (Sam Rockwell) and Susanna (AnnaSophia Robb), the beautiful girl next door, who encourage him out of his shell.
We should be glad that he eventually emerges the Duncan in the beginning of the film is a sad, sad loser. He sits on the beach in jeans as scantily-clad coeds frolic around him. You almost want to grab his shoulders and shake him while screaming "YOLO," just to make him see what he's missing. You almost root for Trent as he relentlessly bullies this sad sack of a person, hoping for some, if any, emotion to come out of Duncan. Yet when Duncan finally does get going, he's a pleasure to watch, and we cheer him on through what are sure to be the toughest years of his life.
His employment at Owen's park, a Shangri-La of cool, genuine people in a land where adults act like children and vice versa, helps him through this journey.
As far as coming-of-age movies go, "The Way, Way Back" isn't exactly breaking new ground, but Nat Faxon and Jim Rash, its writers and directors, give all they've got to make the old dog do new tricks. They've got Carell playing against type as a giant meathead and Rockwell firing all his character actor cylinders to knock it out of the park as Owen. The pair even appears in the movie, with Faxon as Rockwell's sidekick and Rash, best known for playing Dean Craig Pelton on "Community," as a manic-depressive water park employee.
Yet for all its zaniness, "The Way, Way Back" has a way of punching you in the gut and leaving you breathless. There are moments of serious gravitas and familial turmoil that feel very much like a condensed version of an Ingmar Bergman film. This, of course, is not outside the realm of possibility for Faxon and Rash. They won the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar for "The Descendants" (2011), a surprisingly poignant familial story that veered more toward the dramatic than the comedic, which occasionally emerges from the woodwork in their newest film as well.
As first-time directors, Faxon and Rash have a lot to learn. Nothing particularly exciting happens in "The Way, Way Back," and with a film like that, it's easy to let pacing get away from you. That's what exactly happens here. At 103 minutes, the film isn't short, but it feels that way. It's as if you embarked on a story's familiar journey and then stumbled, fell down a hill and arrived at the climax ahead of schedule. Several editing and angle choices don't make a lot of sense notably in a scene between Duncan and Owen where indiscriminate cutting back and forth between the two grows disorienting but I suppose it's passable for the few seconds you are immersed in the experience.
That isn't to say "The Way, Way Back" is an inferior or empty film. In fact, it brims with sincerity that seems rare in film these days, As such, when the lights finally go up in the theater, one can't help but feel fully satisfied and complete. There are no lingering questions or themes to ponder with "The Way, Way Back," and in a way, it works beautifully.
Rating: 7.1/10"The Way, Way Back" is currently playing at the Nugget.
