Duncan (Liam James) is not exactly looking forward to summer on the beach in Jim Rash and Nat Faxon’s thoughtful coming-of-age drama
THE WAY, WAY BACK (Nat Faxon & Jim Rash, 2013)
In theaters now
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Jim Rash and Nat Faxon’s The Way, Way Back is a gentle, deeply affecting, and tender coming-of-age drama about an awkward adolescent boy having difficulties dealing with his parents’ divorce and his mother’s new boyfriend. Liam James stars as fourteen-year-old Duncan, who is forced to spend the summer in a Massachusetts beach resort town with his mother, Pam (Toni Collette); Trent (Steve Carell), the man she is considering settling down with; and Trent’s stuck-up daughter, Steph (Zoe Levin), who resents having to watch over the brooding, nearly silent Duncan. Everyone has to deal with their neighbor, the wildly wacky Betty (a wildly wacky Allison Janney), who continually chastises her son, Peter (River Alexander), because of his odd right eye and whose daughter, Susanna (AnnaSophia Robb), is the only one who seems to recognize what Duncan is going through. To get away from it all, Duncan heads off to a local water park (the actual Water Wizz), where he is taken under the wing of one of the managers, Owen (Sam Rockwell), who hasn’t really grown up himself yet, a man-child who is always goofing around with his fellow employees, the customers, and his boss, Caitlyn (Maya Rudolph). As Duncan starts finding out some disturbing truths about his mother, Trent, and Trent’s friends Kip (Rob Corddry) and Joan (Amanda Peet), he also learns a lot about life in general and his situation specifically.
Duncan (Liam James) learns about life and love from Owen (Sam Rockwell) in THE WAY, WAY BACK
Evoking such films as Greg Mottola’s underrated Adventureland and Wes Anderson’s cult classic Rushmore, The Way, Way Back is an honest, poignant examination of one boy’s summer to remember. James (Psych, The Killing) gives a riveting performance as Duncan, a kid who is turning away from a world that keeps letting him down. But just as he’s giving up on trusting adults, be becomes friends with a man who doesn’t seem to take anything seriously, until he does, played with hysterically reckless abandon by Rockwell, channeling Stripes-era Bill Murray. Although the film is set in the modern day, Rash and Faxon, who teamed up with director Alexander Payne to win the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar for The Descendants, give The Way, Way Back an engaging retro feel, from the references to 1980s music (Bonnie Tyler’s “Holding Out for a Hero,” REO Speedwagon’s “I Can’t Fight This Feeling Anymore”) to Trent’s mint Buick woody station wagon. Rash (Craig Pelton on Community) and Faxon (Ben in Ben and Kate) — who also appear in the film as Water Wizz employees, Rash playing the very strange Lewis and Faxon as the hunky Roddy — also manage to save several scenes that threaten to become uncomfortable and take away from the otherwise believable plot twists. Carell and Collette, who were brother and sister in Little Miss Sunshine, here make a good couple, a pair of adults who still have some growing up of their own to do. The opening scene, with Duncan sitting in the way, way back of the station wagon, facing where they’ve been, not where they’re going, sets a marvelous tone for this small gem.