"The Way, Way Back" is a Warm, Breezy Coming of Age Story

Co-writers and co-directors of The Way, Way Back Jim Rash and Nat Faxon's previous work, The Descendents, is also about a broken family and one of its more minor aspects is about George Clooney's daughter (played by the fantastic Shailene Woodley, who is starring The Spectacular Now, another coming of age story that I've yet to see but hear is good). In that subplot, there's the very, very small hints of The Way, Way Back. Rash and Naxon appear to be interested in young people coming to accept the awful truths about the world and adulthood, and this gets fuller expression in The Way, Way Back, a very funny, well-drawn coming of age story.

In The Way, Way Back, Rash and Faxon, shift the focus away from the adults and center it on a young protagonist, socially awkward, mumbling 14 year old Duncan (Liam James), who is misunderstood by most everyone around him. This includes the self-righteous (and pretty awful) boyfriend (Steve Carrell) of his mother (Toni Collette), who when the film first opens asks him what he thinks he is on a scale of 1 to 10, before labeling him, in all seriousness, a 3.

The only people he's able to relate to are the slacker owner of a near by water park (Sam Rockwell - a part that feels almost as if it was written with Rockwell in mind), in whom in finds a much needed father figure, and the girl next door (AnnSophia Robb) to the summer home his family goes to, who he not all that surprisingly falls hard for and the film sets apart from the other female youngins by making "quirky" (She'd rather read than go swimming!).

The film has the feel of family summer vacations down pat. From the long, stuffy car ride to the oddball people (Allison Janney chews up every scene she gets) that you meet when your on vacation to a town that gets most of its income from vacationing families in the summer, the film puts us right into what its like to be a kid stuck with your family on vacation. This is not something that would make anyone all too pleased but it's exceptionally difficult for the outcast Duncan, who slowly but surely opens up and becomes more confident in himself.

His mother ignores him as she worries what her boyfriend is thinking (all the adults take advantage of their time from "real life" to get super drunk and avoid responsibility), and this is when Duncan begins, unbeknownst to everyone else, hanging around the water park Water Wizz. He soon gets a job, and Rockwell takes him under his wing. 

There's a number of overlapping storytelling methods from The Descendents (the darkness behind seeming paradises, the strained relationships between parents and their child, etc.). One of the things Rash and Naxon do really well is characterization. They're painting in a lot of broadstrokes here but they quickly establish who everyone is and have a knack for making likable, lived-in characters (It helps that they have a great, deep supporting bench to fill the roles). The film also has very simple compositions (sometimes too simple); it's a very static film. The dialogue and the mood (which alternates between sweet and sour, as fits childhood) are the important parts of shots (though it's often too direct with both). It's a far more sweet and sincere film than The Descendents (which was dealing with more irrevocable issues). But when push comes to shove the film is able to take some dark turns and makes them all the more painful because of how thoroughly it sticks to its single point of view.

At times, its too simply drawn, too representative, but Rash and Faxon's great script and the all around good performances of the cast turn that familiarity into something fresh.

Grade: B